Dolphin Word Search

From pod and blowhole to the open ocean: a dolphin puzzle for a sea unit.

Name Date

Dolphin Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 15 words found

SQJRPYGEVBNGDFE

JRUBQSIIYLARFSO

HFRXSTWWITPJLZF

ILTELMLCEYMXUWS

FINLTIPATDPWKSQ

BPOBOTTLENOSEJT

PPREIDLFMMNTSRB

TECHOLOCATIONDO

XRAATKRFMAALTHN

TSIAEKNEMCVPHDL

EYAUMOCEANFFDRH

PORPOISELFIITMF

CNIBLOWHOLESAFO

KXOHYPODOLPHINC

SODEVDXCMASHLSL

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

DolphinDOLPHIN
BottlenoseBOTTLENOSE
OrcaORCA
FinFIN
FlippersFLIPPERS
FlukesFLUKES
BlowholeBLOWHOLE
TailTAIL
EcholocationECHOLOCATION
PodPOD
CalfCALF
MammalMAMMAL
PorpoisePORPOISE
FishFISH
OceanOCEAN

15 of 22 words from the Dolphin Favorites list.

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Answer key: Dolphin Word Search

SQJRPYGEVBNGDFE

JRUBQSIIYLARFSO

HFRXSTWWITPJLZF

ILTELMLCEYMXUWS

FINLTIPATDPWKSQ

BPOBOTTLENOSEJT

PPREIDLFMMNTSRB

TECHOLOCATIONDO

XRAATKRFMAALTHN

TSIAEKNEMCVPHDL

EYAUMOCEANFFDRH

PORPOISELFIITMF

CNIBLOWHOLESAFO

KXOHYPODOLPHINC

SODEVDXCMASHLSL

DOLPHIN, BOTTLENOSE, ORCA, FIN, FLIPPERS, FLUKES, BLOWHOLE, TAIL, ECHOLOCATION, POD, CALF, MAMMAL, PORPOISE, FISH, OCEAN

Next step Find Dolphin and Orca in the ocean word search Match Blowhole and Melon to their meanings on a worksheet

All 86 words

Kinds of Dolphins 16

Baiji The river dolphin of China. A 2006 survey found none, and it is probably extinct.
Blackfish A name for the six dolphins that are commonly thought of as whales, the orca among them.
Boto The Amazon river dolphin. Small hairs on its beak may help it feel its way.
Bottlenose The most common and familiar dolphin. Each one has a whistle of its own that works like a name.
Common The ___ dolphin has 188 to 268 teeth, far more than a bottlenose.
Delphinidae The scientific name of the family of oceanic dolphins.
Dolphin A small toothed whale. Most kinds live in the sea, and a few live in rivers.
Dusky A dolphin of cool coastal waters in the Southern Hemisphere, known for its acrobatics.
Irrawaddy A dolphin of coasts and rivers around the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia. Its forehead is high and round, and it has no beak.
Orca The largest member of the dolphin family, up to 9.5 meters long. It is also called the killer whale.
Pilot Whale Despite its name, a member of the dolphin family, one of six kinds known together as blackfish.
Spinner A small dolphin known for leaping out of the water and turning in the air.
Spotted The pantropical ___ dolphin lives in tropical and temperate oceans all around the world.
Striped The ___ dolphin is named for the black bands that run back along its body from the eye.
Tucuxi A small dolphin of the Amazon basin.
Wholphin The young of a false killer whale and a bottlenose. One was born at a sea park in Hawaii in 1985.

Show all 86 words (70 more)

A Dolphin's Body 18

Beak The long front of the jaws. A porpoise has a shorter one than a dolphin.
Blowhole The opening on top of the head through which a dolphin breathes.
Blubber A thick layer of fat under the skin that keeps a dolphin warm.
Brain The orca's is the second heaviest of any animal, after the sperm whale's.
Dorsal On the back. The ___ fin is the one that shows above the water.
Eyes Set on the sides of the head, so a dolphin sees two separate fields of view.
Fin The one on a dolphin's back has no bone and keeps the animal from rolling as it swims.
Flippers The two front limbs, each with four digits inside, used mainly for steering.
Flukes The flat, horizontal blades of the tail, which beat up and down to drive a dolphin forward.
Lungs A dolphin fills these with fresh air when it comes up to breathe.
Melon A mass of fat in the forehead that focuses the sounds a dolphin makes.
Neck Most dolphins cannot turn their heads, because the bones here are fused. River dolphins can.
Rostrum The scientific name for a dolphin's beak, from the Latin word for beak.
Skin A dolphin's is smooth and rubbery, with no hair.
Stomach A dolphin's has two or three chambers.
Streamlined Shaped to slip through water easily, like the torpedo-shaped body of a dolphin.
Tail It ends in the flukes and moves up and down, not from side to side.
Teeth Cone-shaped in a dolphin, spade-shaped in a porpoise.

Echolocation and Senses 10

Clicks Short, sharp sounds used for echolocation, among the loudest made by sea animals.
Echolocation Learning the size and shape of things by sending out clicks and listening for what comes back.
Hearing So well developed in dolphins that some can survive even when blind.
Memory A bottlenose can recognize the whistle of a dolphin it has not met for over twenty years.
Signature A ___ whistle belongs to one dolphin alone and is formed in its first year.
Smell A sense that dolphins are thought to lack.
Sonar A machine that finds things underwater with sound. Loud naval kinds may harm dolphins.
Taste Probably a weak sense in dolphins: the buds for it are shrunken or missing.
Touch With posture, a way dolphins communicate without sound.
Whistle A bottlenose has one of its own, and other dolphins can call it by copying the sound.

Pod and Family Life 20

Bait Ball A tight mass of fish that dolphins have herded together to feed on.
Breathe A dolphin must come to the surface to do this.
Bubble Ring A hoop of air that a dolphin blows underwater and plays with.
Calf A young dolphin. It is usually born tail first.
Culture Skills passed on by learning, such as sponge use handed down from mother to daughter.
Dive Some dolphins can slow the heart to save oxygen during a deep one.
Herding A way of hunting in which dolphins squeeze a school of fish into a tight mass.
Intelligent Able to learn, teach and cooperate, as dolphins are known to be.
Leap A jump out of the water. Some dolphins can cover about 9 meters.
Mammal A dolphin is one, not a fish: it breathes air and the mother nurses her young.
Mother She alone raises the calf.
Playful Dolphins are this: they toss objects, carry things about and blow rings of bubbles.
Pod A group of dolphins, often up to a dozen. Where food is plentiful, groups can join into one of over 1,000.
Porpoising Traveling in a string of low jumps, which saves energy because there is less friction in air.
School Another name for a group of dolphins.
Shelling Lifting a big conch to the surface and shaking it so that the fish hiding inside fall out.
Sleep A dolphin does it with one half of its brain at a time, so it can keep breathing.
Sponge Some bottlenose dolphins in Australia wear one on the snout to protect it while foraging.
Swim Some dolphins can briefly do this at 29 kilometers an hour.
Tail Walking Rising upright and moving backward across the water. Wild dolphins near Adelaide learned it from one another.

Ocean Home, Food and Relatives 22

Amazon A great river of South America with dolphins of its own, the boto and the tucuxi.
Beluga A white whale of the Arctic whose family is closely related to the dolphins.
Bycatch Sea animals caught by accident in fishing gear, a danger to dolphins.
Cetacean A whale, a dolphin or a porpoise.
Fish With squid, the main food of dolphins.
Ganges A great river of South Asia whose river dolphin is endangered.
Hippo The closest living relative of whales and dolphins.
Laguna A town in Brazil where dolphins drive fish toward fishermen waiting on the shore.
Narwhal An Arctic whale whose family is closely related to the dolphins.
Nets Drift and gill ___ set for fish kill many dolphins by accident.
Ocean Most dolphins live in the open sea, and most kinds prefer warm water.
Pollution Plastics, metals and chemicals in the sea, which build up in predators such as dolphins.
Porpoise A small toothed whale, a relative of the dolphins, with no real beak and spade-shaped teeth.
Seals Sea mammals that orcas hunt.
Shark Bay A place in Australia where dolphins trap fish in huge conch shells.
Sharks A few large kinds are the only sea animals that threaten most small dolphins.
Shrimp A small shellfish that dolphins catch.
Squid A soft-bodied sea animal with arms that dolphins eat.
Toothed Dolphins belong to the ___ whales, with porpoises, sperm whales and beaked whales.
Tropics The warm belt around the equator, where most kinds of dolphin live.
Whale Dolphins are small toothed ones.
Yangtze The river in China whose dolphin, the baiji, has probably died out.

How this list was compiled: 86 dolphin words in five lists, from kinds of dolphins to their ocean home, food and relatives. Facts in the clues were checked on October 16, 2026 against English Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/, CC BY-SA 4.0), chiefly its Dolphin article, and against a NOAA National Ocean Service fact page (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/dolphin_porpoise.html). This site is not affiliated with NOAA. Licence: own work

How it works

This dolphin word search opens on 15 words: Bottlenose, Orca, Fin, Blowhole, Echolocation, Pod, Calf, Porpoise and seven more. Behind it wait 86 dolphin words in five lists, each with a one-line fact.

Read the full guide

A dolphin word search printable in five lists

Kinds of Dolphins has 16 words, such as Spinner, Boto and Irrawaddy. A Dolphin's Body has 18, from Flippers and Flukes to Melon. Echolocation and Senses has 10. Pod and Family Life has 20, such as Porpoising and Bait Ball. Ocean Home, Food and Relatives has 22, with Narwhal, Beluga and Hippo.

Short words for young readers, long ones for a challenge

Easy Dolphins keeps to 31 words of 3 to 5 letters, such as Fin, Pod, Calf and Squid. Hard Dolphins has 21 long ones, Echolocation and Streamlined among them.

The grid drops spaces, so Pilot Whale hides as PILOTWHALE and Bait Ball as BAITBALL.

Questions and answers

Is a dolphin a fish or a mammal?

A mammal. A dolphin breathes air through the blowhole on top of its head, and a mother nurses her calf. Dolphins are small toothed whales, and the closest living relatives of the whales are the hippos.

What is the difference between a dolphin and a porpoise?

NOAA's National Ocean Service puts it down to faces, fins and figures. Dolphins have long beaks, cone-shaped teeth and curved dorsal fins. Porpoises have smaller mouths, spade-shaped teeth, triangular fins and stouter bodies.

Is an orca a whale or a dolphin?

Both names fit. The orca, or killer whale, is the largest member of the dolphin family, NOAA says, and every dolphin is a toothed whale. Wikipedia's Dolphin article gives its length as up to 9.5 meters.

How do dolphins sleep?

With one half of the brain at a time, Wikipedia's Dolphin article says. The other half stays alert enough to keep the animal breathing and to watch for danger.

All 86 words

Kinds of Dolphins 16

A Dolphin's Body 18

Echolocation and Senses 10

Pod and Family Life 20

Ocean Home, Food and Relatives 22

How it works

A dolphin word search printable in five lists

Short words for young readers, long ones for a challenge

Questions and answers

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