🐬
Common bottlenose dolphin
Tursiops truncatus
Marine mammals · Least concern
vs
🦁
Lion
Panthera leo
Carnivores · Vulnerable
One clip names both of them
303 views between them.
Common bottlenose dolphin outweighs Lion 1.5× — 230 kg against 149 kg. Both figures are averages across males and females.
Tale of the tape
Body mass
230 kg
🐬 Common bottlenose dolphin · COMBINE
149 kg
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Shoulder height
no figure yet
🐬 Common bottlenose dolphin
1.15 m
🦁 Lion
Body length
3.63 m
🐬 Common bottlenose dolphin · COMBINE
2.17 m
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Top speed
no figure yet
🐬 Common bottlenose dolphin
55 km/h
🦁 Lion
Bite force
no figure yet
🐬 Common bottlenose dolphin
1,768 N
🦁 Lion
Maximum lifespan
53 yr
🐬 Common bottlenose dolphin · COMBINE
30 yr
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Bars are sized against the larger of the two figures. Bite force figures come from individual studies and vary a lot between sources.
Animals caught on camera
Real footage of the animals on this site — hunting, fighting, and getting on with it.
Shared ancestry
The closest group they share is Laurasiatheria (superorder), home to 4,193 species.
They last shared an ancestor about 64 million years ago.
Estimates range from 58 to 76 million years; the figure above is the middle estimate.
About this estimate
Dates from Upham, Esselstyn & Jetz 2019, PLoS Biology 17:e3000494 (CC0).