Whales Are Nature’s Wonder And Fascinates Many
July 11, 2021 at 7:10 p.m.
By Max [email protected]
It begins at an early age and stems from a child’s instinct for curiosity and discovery. Both dinosaurs and whales are an accessible form of science for children. Their young minds can grasp these gigantic creatures without needing to understand mathematical principles or chemistry.
I continue to maintain an interest and search for any reference to each of them. For example, I just finished reading “Spying on Whales” written by Nick Peyenson and published by the Penguin group.
The book disclosed that most large baleen whale species alive today belong to the rorqual family, which feed on krill and other small prey by lunging underwater. They comprise the more familiar members of the cetacean bestiary, including humpbacks, blue whales, fin whales and minke whales. (Cetacean refers to marine mammals of the order Cetacean which includes whales, dolphins or porpoises.)
Rorquals are also the most massive species of vertebrates ever to have evolved on the planet — far heavier than the largest dinosaurs. Even the smallest rorquals, minke whales, can weigh 10 tons as adults, about twice as much as an adult bull African elephant. Rorquals are easy to distinguish from any other baleen whale, such as a gray whale or a bowhead whale. This species has a long, corrugated throat pouch that runs from their chin to their belly button. (Whales have belly buttons, just like you and me.) The features that make rorquals so obviously different from other baleen whales also plays a critical role in how they feed.
Baleen
All baleen whales have baleen instead of teeth ,which they use to collect shrimp-like krill, plankton and small fish from the sea. These bristly baleen plates filter, sift, sieve or trap the whales’ favorite prey from seawater inside their mouths. Baleen is made out of keratin, the same protein that makes up our fingernails and hair. The baleen of the bowhead whale can be up to 4 meters (13 feet) long.
Size
Cetaceans include the largest animals ever to live, including the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), which is nearly 30 times larger than an African elephant and twice as large as the largest sauropod. However, the reasons for their enormous sizes or the possibility of still larger animals remains unclear. A deeper understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms shaping cetacean sizes would shed light on the role of energetic constraints in limiting species sizes.
Motherhood
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the biggest mothers on earth give birth to the biggest babies. A newborn blue whale is 23 feet (7 meters) long and weighs up to three tons (5,950 pounds or 2700 kilograms), which is about the size of a full-grown hippo!
For the first six or seven months of life, a baby blue whale drinks about 100-150 gallons (380-570 liters) of his or her mom's fat-laden milk (it is 35-50% fat) every day (about enough to fill a bath). The baby can gain up to 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) an hour or over 250 pounds (113 kilograms) every day. In other words, the baby puts on over a ton in weight every 10 days!
Blue Whales
A blue whale baby is typically weaned at 6 to 7 months old at which point they have doubled in length. The mother and baby often stay together for about a year in total and the youngster will reach sexual maturity at 5-10 years old. Blue whales are thought to live for at least 80 years.
Blue whales can reach the colossal length of 98 feet (29.9 meters), longer than a basketball court or two school buses back to back! Blue whales in the Southern Hemisphere are generally larger than those in the Northern Hemisphere and female blues are larger than males.
Blue whales are now rare due to widespread commercial whaling. Many populations were driven to near extinction while some distinct populations may have been wiped out completely.
Final Thoughts
As mentioned above, it is the colossal size of whales that garners our attention. Although in one of the best essays ever written on the subject titled “On Being the Right Size,” the author J.B.S. Haldane noted that for some reason zoologists had long not paid attention to this attribute.
Haldane was a British geneticist, biometrician, physiologist and popularizer of science who lived in the early to mid twentieth century. Haldane cited examples and found no indication in zoology textbooks that eagles are larger than sparrows, or that a hippopotamus is bigger than the hare. But yet it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippo, or a whale as small as a herring. Haldane proposed that for every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change in form.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. His new book “Science Snippets” is available from Amazon and other book sellers. It contains a number of previously published columns. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
It begins at an early age and stems from a child’s instinct for curiosity and discovery. Both dinosaurs and whales are an accessible form of science for children. Their young minds can grasp these gigantic creatures without needing to understand mathematical principles or chemistry.
I continue to maintain an interest and search for any reference to each of them. For example, I just finished reading “Spying on Whales” written by Nick Peyenson and published by the Penguin group.
The book disclosed that most large baleen whale species alive today belong to the rorqual family, which feed on krill and other small prey by lunging underwater. They comprise the more familiar members of the cetacean bestiary, including humpbacks, blue whales, fin whales and minke whales. (Cetacean refers to marine mammals of the order Cetacean which includes whales, dolphins or porpoises.)
Rorquals are also the most massive species of vertebrates ever to have evolved on the planet — far heavier than the largest dinosaurs. Even the smallest rorquals, minke whales, can weigh 10 tons as adults, about twice as much as an adult bull African elephant. Rorquals are easy to distinguish from any other baleen whale, such as a gray whale or a bowhead whale. This species has a long, corrugated throat pouch that runs from their chin to their belly button. (Whales have belly buttons, just like you and me.) The features that make rorquals so obviously different from other baleen whales also plays a critical role in how they feed.
Baleen
All baleen whales have baleen instead of teeth ,which they use to collect shrimp-like krill, plankton and small fish from the sea. These bristly baleen plates filter, sift, sieve or trap the whales’ favorite prey from seawater inside their mouths. Baleen is made out of keratin, the same protein that makes up our fingernails and hair. The baleen of the bowhead whale can be up to 4 meters (13 feet) long.
Size
Cetaceans include the largest animals ever to live, including the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), which is nearly 30 times larger than an African elephant and twice as large as the largest sauropod. However, the reasons for their enormous sizes or the possibility of still larger animals remains unclear. A deeper understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms shaping cetacean sizes would shed light on the role of energetic constraints in limiting species sizes.
Motherhood
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the biggest mothers on earth give birth to the biggest babies. A newborn blue whale is 23 feet (7 meters) long and weighs up to three tons (5,950 pounds or 2700 kilograms), which is about the size of a full-grown hippo!
For the first six or seven months of life, a baby blue whale drinks about 100-150 gallons (380-570 liters) of his or her mom's fat-laden milk (it is 35-50% fat) every day (about enough to fill a bath). The baby can gain up to 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) an hour or over 250 pounds (113 kilograms) every day. In other words, the baby puts on over a ton in weight every 10 days!
Blue Whales
A blue whale baby is typically weaned at 6 to 7 months old at which point they have doubled in length. The mother and baby often stay together for about a year in total and the youngster will reach sexual maturity at 5-10 years old. Blue whales are thought to live for at least 80 years.
Blue whales can reach the colossal length of 98 feet (29.9 meters), longer than a basketball court or two school buses back to back! Blue whales in the Southern Hemisphere are generally larger than those in the Northern Hemisphere and female blues are larger than males.
Blue whales are now rare due to widespread commercial whaling. Many populations were driven to near extinction while some distinct populations may have been wiped out completely.
Final Thoughts
As mentioned above, it is the colossal size of whales that garners our attention. Although in one of the best essays ever written on the subject titled “On Being the Right Size,” the author J.B.S. Haldane noted that for some reason zoologists had long not paid attention to this attribute.
Haldane was a British geneticist, biometrician, physiologist and popularizer of science who lived in the early to mid twentieth century. Haldane cited examples and found no indication in zoology textbooks that eagles are larger than sparrows, or that a hippopotamus is bigger than the hare. But yet it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippo, or a whale as small as a herring. Haldane proposed that for every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change in form.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. His new book “Science Snippets” is available from Amazon and other book sellers. It contains a number of previously published columns. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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