The blue whale has ocean dangers, disease, killer whales and man. For
hundreds of years man has hunted whales, but in the last fifty
years man has killed so many that there are fewer than three thousand
whales left in the oceans. Even the International Whaling Commission
has failed to stop the killing of whales. Zoologists fear that
even if the blue whales were left alone, there may be too few
left to save because they may not be able to find a mate for reproduction.
We hope it's not too late to save The Blue Whale.
Their mothers are cows and the males are bulls. A blue whale only
has one baby every two years. It takes ten to eleven months to
be born. The calf has to stay with the cow for seven months. It
weighs three tons when it is born and is twenty-three feet long.
It gains two hundred pounds a day and drinks a thousand pounds
of milk a day. Blue Whales are baleen whales like gray whales,
finback whales, and humpback whales. Baleen whales have no teeth.
They have a comb of hundreds of whalebone plates in their upper
jaws.
The blue whale is the end of a food chain that starts with tiny
plankton which are small floating plants. Little shrimp feed on
the plankton. These little shrimp are called krill.
The blue whale eats thousands of these in one gulp. They open
their mouths wide as they swim through a cloud of krill floating
together in the water. It presses its tongue forward to force
the water out and traps the tiny krill in the baleen. Blue whales
have tiny throats only a few inches wide so they can only swallow
small things.
We wonder if the hole in the ozone that is causing the earth to
warm up will effect the food chain and cause the ocean to die.
Little animals like plankton might not grow if the ocean changes.
Some scientists have speculated that the blue whale may once have
walked on land because of what appears to be a free floating hip
bone in his body. The skeleton of a blue whale looks part fish,
part human, and part bird.
The blue whale has ocean dangers; disease, killer whales, and
man. For hundreds of years man has hunted whales, but in the last
fifty years man has killed so many that there are fewer than three
thousand whales left in the oceans. Even the International Whaling
Commission has failed to stop the killing of whales. Zoologists
fear that even if the blue whales were left alone, there may be
too few left to save because they may not be able to find a mate
for reproduction.
We hope it's not too late to save The Blue Whale.
Previous 