Species
Commerson's dolphin
Mammals
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Commerson's dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii), also known by names such as jacobita, skunk dolphin, piebald dolphin and panda dolphin, is a small oceanic dolphin named for the French naturalist Philibert Commerson, who first described it after sighting the species in the Strait of Magellan in 1767. It comprises two geographically separated subspecies roughly 8,500 kilometers apart, one along the coasts of Argentina, the Strait of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands, sharply patterned in black and white, and the other around the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean, larger and less sharply patterned in grays with a white ventral band. It is one of the smallest cetaceans, growing to about 1.5 meters, with a recorded mature female measuring 1.36 meters and 23 kilograms, possibly the smallest adult cetacean known, and it feeds on a mix of coastal and pelagic fish and squid, with South American populations also taking crustaceans.
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