During our cycle ride to Arrecife, we came across a whale skeleton which is on display in the old town.

Sadly, this is a real skeleton from a female whale that got stranded on a beach in Tenerife in 1995.

We were all surprised to see what looked like a hand bone, it had 4 fingers. The next day, we visited Rancho Texas (see blog post) and during the educational dolphin talk they explained that dolphins (and whales) have fingers inside their pectoral fins. These are the fins lower down on each side of the body near the front.

Other things learnt about dolphins:

• they use echo location (like bats) to calculate the distance of objects from them.
• they weigh between 150-300kg
• they are between 2.5m – 2.7m long
• mums give birth to one baby at a time
• a bab dolphin is known as a calf (like a cow)
• dolphins can identify each other from their unique sounds, just like humans.

During the dolphin show the trainers get the dolphins to make all their different noises, they make several different sounds, some are like clicks and some are like squeaks.

The show also demonstrated how high and acrobatic these creatures are. It was really incredible to watch and they can swim really fast too.

Next to the dolphin arena is an educational and interactive walk through display. Here I learnt more about dolphins and other sea creatures.

They had boards with lots of sea creatures and mummy was impressed at how many I knew, including:

• swordfish
• hammerhead shark
• octopus

I didn’t know what this fish was (picture below) but I do now, it’s a cuttlefish. I remembered finding cuttlefish on the beach with Popsie last summer (read blog post).

It also teaches you more about the history of Lanzarote and it’s volcanos and lava tubes. There is a separate post for this here.