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Whale

Whales are a group of cetacean mammals that live in the ocean. Like other mammals, they breathe oxygen from the air, have a small amount of hair, and are warm blooded.

Whale
Southern right whale
Southern right whale
Scientific classification
Included groups
Cladistically included but traditionally excluded groups
a Sperm whale fluke
Dutch whalers near Spitsbergen, by Abraham Storck, 1690

There are two basic kinds of whales, and about 100 species.[1]

People use the word whale in different ways. Some use it for all Cetaceans including dolphins and porpoises. These people say that dolphins and porpoises are also whales, because they are also Cetaceans. Others separate out the dolphins and porpoises: common English-speaking people have never called them or thought of them as whales unless they are very large. Actually, there is no clear line between whales and dolphins.

Whales have been killed for meat and oil by whalers. However, many countries have laws saying not to kill whales anymore. Some countries, such as Iceland and Japan, do not have these laws. In other countries, such as the USA, only Eskimos and some American Indians may legally kill whales such as the blue whale and beluga whale.

Diet

Baleen whales eat plankton and krill. Plankton are clouds of very small fish floating in the water. The whales' mouths are very large. They open their mouths very wide and hold a big mouthful of sea water. Their throats stretch very wide to make the space inside their mouth even bigger. Then they close their mouth and squeeze out the seawater. The food does not escape because, instead of teeth, these whales have filters called baleen. Baleen is long, hard strips that act like a strainer. The water goes through the baleen. Animals and plants in the water are trapped and swallowed, while the water goes back out.[2] This is very different from the way that toothed whales eat.

Toothed whales eat larger fish or meat and are like big dolphins. They have sharp teeth and usually have a big forehead. Inside the big forehead is a chamber to make and direct sounds. They make all kinds of sounds, including sounds so loud they can shock fish. They can use echolocation to locate things that they can not see. Some toothed whales, such as the sperm whale, are almost never called dolphins. Some of them are always called dolphins. Others are like dolphins in some ways and like whales in others.

Taxonomy

Cetaceans are divided into two suborders:

  • The largest suborder, Mysticeti (baleen whales) are characterized by baleen, a sieve-like structure in the upper jaw made of keratin, which it uses to filter plankton from the water.
  • Odontoceti (toothed whales) bear sharp teeth for hunting. Odontoceti also include dolphins and porpoises.

Both cetaceans and artiodactyl are now classified under the super-order Cetartiodactyla, which includes both whales and hippopotamuses. Whales are the hippopotamus's closest living relatives.[3]

Evolution

Main page: Evolution of cetaceans

All cetaceans, including whales, dolphins and porpoises, are descendants of land-living mammals of the Artiodactyl order (even-toed ungulates). Both are related to Indohyus (an extinct semi-aquatic deer-like ungulate) from which they split around 54 million years ago.[4][5] Primitive whales probably first took to the sea about 50 million years ago and became fully aquatic about 5-10 million years later.[6] Pakicetus is an important transitional species.

Scientists from the University of Plymouth studied many animals that dive and hold their breath, from insects to whales, and they found that larger animals can hold their breath longer than smaller animals because they can store more oxygen for their size, and this difference was much bigger for warm-blooded animals than for cold-blooded animals. They said this may be why modern whales and extinct diving animals like plesiosaurs became so large.[7][8]

Physiology

Because of where they live (and unlike many animals), whales are conscious breathers: they decide when to breathe. Whales breathe through blowholes. Baleen whales have two and toothed whales have one. These are on the top of the head: the animal breathes while most of their body is underwater. Breathing first shoots out extra water from the blowhole, making a jet into the air, followed by inhaling air into the lungs.

All mammals sleep, including whales, but they cannot stay in an unconscious state for too long, because they need to be conscious to breathe. It is thought that only one hemisphere (half) of their brains sleeps at a time, so that whales are never completely asleep, but still get the rest they need.[9] Whales are thought to sleep around eight hours a day.

A baby whale is called a "calf". One calf is born every two or three years. Gestation takes up to a year. Nursing continues for more than a year in many species; there is a strong bond between mother and calf. Reproductive maturity occurs at seven to ten years. This mode of reproduction produces few offspring, but increases their chance of surviving. The effect of hunting is severe on these animals, who replace their numbers slowly.[10]

Whale behavior

Socialization

Whales are known to teach, learn, cooperate, scheme, and even grieve.[11]

Breaching

Breaching is what happens when a whale jumps into the air and then purposefully flops down on the water with a great splash. Sometimes it twirls in the air when it does this. Scientists are not sure whether breaching is done to play, to clean the whale's skin of things that are stuck to it, or to tell other whales something.[12]

There are a number of other behaviors on the surface which are not well understood.[13] 'Logging' is when a whale swims slowly at the surface of the ocean with very little movement. When a whale does this, it looks like a log in the water. Some scientists think this is a kind of rest or sleep for whales. 'Spyhopping' is when a whale sits straight up in the water with its head straight up and out of the water. It will sometimes turn around in circles as it spyhops. Some scientists think this might be because whales are trying to see what is happening above water. 'Lobtailing' is done when a whale faces downward in the water. It then slaps the water with a thunderous sound. Scientists think this might be done to warn other whales of danger, or as a method of feeding.[14]

Whale Media

  • Spotted hyena side view

  • Hartmann zebra, Hobatere Private Reserve, west of Etosha National Park

  • 07. Camel Profile, near Silverton, NSW, 07.07.2007

  • Scavenger feast - Yala December 2010 (1) (cropped)

  • Walia ibex illustration white background

  • Hippopotamus amphibius in Tanzania 2830 Nevit

  • Skeleton of a basilosaurus cetoides in the Sant Hall of Oceans in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. It is the only genuine specimen currently exhibited anywhere in the world. In proportion to its body size, Basilosaurus cetoides had extremely small - 2 foot (0.6 m) long hind limbs which had limited mobility, and could only assume 2 positions: against the body, or belly.

  • Features of a blue whale

  • Features of a sperm whale skeleton

  • Skeleton of a bowhead whale; notice the vestigial pelvis. Richard Lydekker, 1894

Related pages

References

 
The sculpture Gaia and the Whale, in Monza, Italy
  1. ↑ Mead, James G. and Brownell, Robert L. Jr. 2005. Order Cetacea (pp. 723-743). In Wilson, Don E. and Reeder, DeeAnn M. (eds) Mammal species of the world: a taxonomic and geographic reference. 3rd ed, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2 vols. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494
  2. ↑ Buskey, Theresa (1996). Alan Christopherson, M.S. (ed.). History and Geography. L.I.F.E.P.A.C. Alpha Omega Publications, Inc. ISBN 978-1-58095-156-2. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
  3. ↑ Anon (25 January 2005). "Scientists find missing link between the whale and its closest relative, the hippo". PhysOrg.com. PhysOrg.com. Archived from the original on 6 June 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2010.
  4. ↑ Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy. "Whales descended from tiny deer-like ancestors". ScienceDaily. Archived from the original on 24 April 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2007.
  5. ↑ Dawkins, Richard (2004). The Ancestor's Tale: a pilgrimage to the dawn of life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-00583-8.
  6. ↑ "How whales learned to swim". BBC News. 8 May 2002. Archived from the original on 24 August 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2006.
  7. ↑ Eurekalert.org (May 26, 2020). "Scientists reveal new fundamental principles governing diving in animals". Press release. Archived from the original on June 4, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200604163819/https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/uop-srn052620.php. Retrieved June 1, 2020. 
  8. ↑ Wilco C. E. P. Verberk; Piero Calosi; François Brischoux; John I. Spicer; Theodore Garland; David T. Bilton (27 May 2020). "Universal metabolic constraints shape the evolutionary ecology of diving in animals". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 287 (1927). doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.0488. PMC 7287373. PMID 32453989.
  9. ↑ Anon (24 May 2001). "Do whales and dolphins sleep?". How Stuff Works. Discovery Communications. Archived from the original on 13 February 2010. Retrieved 14 February 2010.
  10. ↑ "Blue Whale assessment and status report" (PDF). Archived from the original on 15 September 2014. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
  11. ↑ Siebert, Charles (8 July 2009). "Watching whales watching us". New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on 28 April 2021. Retrieved 31 August 2017.
  12. ↑ Hooker, Sascha K. (2009). Perrin, William F.; Wursig, Bernd; Thewissen, J.G.M. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals (2nd ed.). Academic Press. p. 1174. ISBN 978-0-12-373553-9. Archived from the original on 9 November 2009. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
  13. ↑ Whitehead, Hal (2003), Sperm whales: social evolution in the ocean, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 181, ISBN 0226895173, archived from the original on 5 July 2021, retrieved 24 February 2022
  14. ↑ Weinrich, Mason T.; Schilling, Mark R.; Belt, Cynthia R. (December 1992), "Evidence for acquisition of a novel feeding behaviour: lobtail feeding in humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae", Animal Behaviour, 44 (6): 1059–1072, doi:10.1016/S0003-3472(05)80318-5, S2CID 53270820

Other websites

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