The Biggest Animal of All

Whales live in the water. They look like fish. They swim like fish. But they aren’t fish at all. Whales are “aquatic mammals.” “Aquatic” means they live in water. Mammals are warm-blooded creatures that give birth to live young and feed them with milk.

Whales can’t stay under the water all the time as fish do. They have to come up for air from time to time. They breathe through blowholes at the top of their heads. When their warm breath hits the colder air outside, it makes a cloud of mist called a “spout.” You can spot a whale by its spout.

Fish can’t make sounds. But whales can make two kinds of sounds. The first sounds like a bark, or a whistle, or sometimes a scream. Whales make these sounds to speak to each other. Some whales also make very loud, low sounds that other whales can hear from many miles away. This sound can be heard only underwater.

The biggest whale of all is the blue whale. It can be 110 feet long and weigh around 150 tons. That’s more than ten buses put together! Even a baby blue whale is huge.

Finding food is a simple matter for blue whales. They just swim along with their huge mouths open, and thousands of tiny sea creatures flow in. But blue whales have no teeth. Instead, they have strings of hardened skin, like our fingernails, that hang from the roof of the mouth. This hardened skin is called “baleen” and is used as a strainer to let out the water while holding back the captured sea creatures. [ ]

Picture Source: http://www.whalesong.com.au/2014/04/humpback-whale-facts/

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Banda Aceh, Indonesia

18th April 2016

TM. Noumi