#I'm a dyslexic zoologist.

[wingedfaith]

Thank you @mensfrightsactivist for asking!

Okay so I can't really find a definitive answer. It looks like no one has ever really asked and its such a lesser known endangered species that people don't know to ask and researchers are focusing on other aspects of the species. So basically, I don't know and no one has published knowledge on knowing.

However, I wouldn't be a zoologist or a scientist if I didn't have some hypothesis!

Possible reasons in no particular order could be;

- Extra fat storage. And it just so happened to gather there by some twisted fate of evolution. Like the camel. And dolphins use to be land animal quadrupeds.

- It may have become a more attractive feature within the dolphins society. Think of the hump like a birds color feathers. Larger the hump the more attractive you were, thus the more successful you were with mating, thus thus evolution geared them to mate into more defined humps.

- Better individual recognition. This is a phenomenon found within intelligent social species to 'know' individuals. The humps could be used to identify each other by shape while hunting, swimming, etc. Especially mother and child dolphin.

- Maybe the shape helps with their echolocation. I've seen weirder things used for weirder stuff in nature.

- Better repositioning of fat the streamline swimming efficiency. The hump cuts through the water. Good.

- Could be to make them look bigger for threat of predators, but I'll be honest, predators (the non human kind) aren't really the biggest worry on dolphin. Dolphin can and will fuck shit up. They are strong. BUT! It could be residual from their less impressive days! And now it just has added benefits that weren't the intended result (see above).

Whatever the reason, evolution suggests that at one point there were no dolphins humps and then genes for a hump mutated into existence and started being expressed. Those individuals were more successful at one point (at least one point) and thus had more survival and offspring. And now we have this weird and wonderful creature!

I CANNOT stop thinking about how absurd of an animal the Indian Ocean humpback dolphin is like

Why so much hump???? It is gratuitous. It literally looks like there is another, smaller dolphin just smushed on top like two gummy bears that melted together in the sun

Thank you @seolhe for alerting me to the existence of humpback dolphins, because I literally think about this thick bitch daily