Hey there!
There's a dolphin that launches itself out of the ocean and spins like a rifle bullet.
Up to seven complete rotations in a single leap. Then it lands, and does it again.
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Spinner dolphins are small, slender, and built for such acrobatic movements.
They live across the tropical belt of every ocean, and off Hawaii they come close enough to shore that people can watch them from the beach.
But their day runs backwards from ours:
They spend the daylight hours resting in shallow, calm, sandy-bottomed bays.
Not sleeping exactly, since dolphins never fully sleep, but drifting in tight social groups, keeping the young close, staying out of reach of predators.
At nightfall the whole pod moves out into deep water to hunt.
So why the spinning?
Nobody's certain.
The leading theory is remoras, the hitchhiker fish that latch onto dolphin skin and create drag. And full-speed rotation generates enough centrifugal force to fling them off.
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