The town of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, exported four bottlenose dolphins each to Saudi Arabia and Egypt in August, a Taiji official said Friday.

"Dolphins in Taiji are popular around the world because they are smart and I personally think they have cute faces," Hiromitsu Nambu, who arranges exports of live dolphins from Taiji, told The Japan Times.

Dolphins are also caught alive in the Black Sea and near Indonesia and the Solomon Islands, but "probably none of those places secure as stable a supply of live dolphins as Taiji," Nambu said.