LESSON XLIII.

GREAT WHALES ALSO.

“So far I live to NorthwardNo man lives North of me;To the East are wild mountain chains,And beyond them meres and plains;To the Westward, all is sea.”

“So far I live to Northward

No man lives North of me;

To the East are wild mountain chains,

And beyond them meres and plains;

To the Westward, all is sea.”

—Longfellow.

Many people think that a whale is a huge fish, the largest of the fish class. This idea is entirely wrong; a whale is not a fish, but a mammal. It belongs to the same class as the cow, sheep, horse, lion, monkey, and man, because all these widely differing creatures are born alive, and not in an egg, and when young are nourished by their mothers’ milk. The mammalian class, distinguished in this way by suckling the young, is divided into many orders, and to one of these, the cetacean, or whale order, the whales give their name.

The whale is the largest of all living mammals; it is a mammal of the sea, and has a fish-like body because its home is constantly in the waters. A whale is entirely helpless when cast upon the land; it is unable to move itself, or to find anything to eat. Out of water it will soon die, but not because it is unable to breathe air, as is the case with the fishes.[78]

The whale breathes air through its nostrils into lungs; it does not have gills, and therefore while in the water it must constantly come to the surface for air. Thus the principalmotion of the whale in the water is up and down, coming to the surface, and then seeking the depths. To aid it in this motion the whale’s tail expands sidewise or horizontally, and not up and down or vertically, as do the tails of most fishes which chiefly swim straight forward, or in large curves.

Let us look at a whale. Its body is cone-shaped; the head is very large, sometimes one-third of the animal’s entire length; there is no notch of the body to mark the neck;[79]the body tapers to the tail, which is widely expanded on each side into what are called flukes, and thus becomes a very strong propeller. Just behind the head we find a pair of fore limbs, called paddles or flippers. These are flat and oval, and have externally no marks of joints, fingers, or nails. But if you examine the skeleton of a whale, you will find that this limb is divided into arm and hand bones, very much like those of your own arms and fingers. There are no external signs of hind limbs, but in some kinds of whales we find in the skeletons some small, soft bones like a hint of legs.

The skin of the whale is smooth, of a dark gray or black color, and without hair except a few bristles around the mouth. Under the skin is spread a layer of several inches of fat, called blubber. This layer of blubber serves to keep the whale warm, and also to render its huge body light, so that it will float easily; it also keeps it from being readily injured. Most whales have a low, narrow fin down the centre of the back, to aid them in keeping a proper position in the water.

Let us now examine more particularly the whale’s big head; it has small eyes, and a pair of tiny holes for ears.These ears are close behind the eyes, but the nostrils are usually placed on top of the head. In nearly all varieties of whales we find teeth inside the large mouth. In one very important species there are no teeth, but instead, we find a large number of horny plates. The whale’s mouth opens very wide, and the lips are stiff and immovable, not soft and flexible like our own.

Most people have read of theblowingor spouting of the whale, when it sends a double stream of water from its nostrils up into the air. The general idea is that the whale takes this water in at the mouth, and then spurts it up into the air through the nostrils, as a matter of amusement. This is not true. When a whale comes to the surface he takes in a large amount of air, and returns below; most of this air becomes changed to steam or vapor, as the animal remains below for some time. Then the whale comes up for more air, and the first thing is to free his lungs of the heated, vaporized air that is already in them. The animal drives this air violently from its lungs through the nostrils, and rising into the cold atmosphere it is at once changed to spray by condensation. The whale frequently begins to blow before it reaches the top of the water, and so drives surface-water up with the vapor which it expels from its lungs.

Fishes, we know, have very little red blood; reptiles are cold-blooded animals; but whales have plenty of warm, red blood. They are very strong and active creatures in spite of their unwieldy size. The lightness afforded by their blubber, or sheath of fat, and the large amount of air they can contain in their great lungs, and the strength of the tail withits wide flukes,[80]enable them to dash through the water with amazing swiftness.

Most of the “true whales” are flesh-eaters, with very fierce appetites. They devour fishes, mollusks, crustaceans, and even seals or other whales. They need enormous quantities of food to support such large bodies, for a Greenland sperm whale is sometimes seventy feet long, and from twenty to thirty feet thick through the shoulders. To secure the needed amount of food, the vast mouth opens wide. In some whales a man can stand upright between the extended jaws.

In the “right whale,” which has no teeth, the mouth is lined along the upper jaw with long, narrow plates or flakes called baleen, of which whalebone is made. Every piece of whalebone is a strip of this baleen, from within the mouth of a right whale, and every such piece has a wonderful history behind it, for it has been floating, perhaps for many years, through the cold Arctic seas. It could tell us rare tales if it could speak.

These plates of baleen are sometimes seven yards long, and the mouth of one whale has about seven hundred plates. The chief food of this right, or whalebone whale, consists of very small brown crustaceans, one of the numerous crab family. These creatures are so abundant in the northern seas that they lie in banks many leagues long and several feet thick. The whale feeds on these beds of living animals, as a cow browses on grass or hay.

Whales are mild and inoffensive in disposition, unless greatly irritated by wounds and attack. They seldom quarrelamong themselves, but are playful and affectionate, while the mother shows intense fondness for her young. Whales are social animals, and go in herds, or groups; one is seldom found alone.

In the spring the whales pair, and move off together to find some place where they may rear their young. As they travel together they seem very lively and happy; they stop to feed, and indulge in frolics, leaping out of the water, tumbling over and over each other, turning somersaults, and striving to show what they can do. As they come to inlets or deep, quiet bays, which may afford them a safe home, the male whale goes to explore their fitness, or to see if the spot is already taken by some other couple. This is the spring house-hunting of this famous family, and while Mr. Whale enters to make inquiries, Mrs. Whale waits outside. Finally, an abode is selected, and here the mother remains, until in autumn, one, or at most two, little baby whales are born. Compared with their big mother they are small, but compared with human children they are giants.

To her little ones the mother whale gives devoted attention. She suckles them for about two months, at the end of which time they are able to feed on crustaceans and small fish. Then the mother sets off with her family to complete their education by taking them abroad in the water-world. The baby whales can swim as soon as they are born, but not so fast as their big mother, and she carefully accommodates her pace to theirs. If danger threatens, she places herself between it and her child, and hastens the little one’s flight by pressing against it, and so shoving it through the water.

If there is need to go still faster, she sometimes grasps the young one between her flippers and her neck, and so swims with all her might, carrying the little one off. If attacked, she will sacrifice her life rather than abandon her baby. When the baby whale is attacked, the usually mild mother shows great fury.

A male whale also will defend his mate if she is attacked, swimming round and round her, blowing, lashing the waves with his powerful tail, and trying to overturn boats with his mighty head; he will die rather than desert her. Such noble, loyal qualities shown by these animals deepen our regret that through promiscuous slaughter, they are rapidly diminishing in numbers, and are likely to disappear from the Northern hemisphere. Sharks, narwhals, and white bears are enemies of the whale, but none of these brute hunters are as reckless and destructive in their warfare as men.

The sperm whale is more nearly allied to the porpoise than to the right whale. From the sperm whale, oil, ivory, ambergris, and spermaceti are obtained, but no whalebone. The spermaceti, from which this whale derives its name, is found in a cistern-like reservoir over two yards deep, placed near the brain cavity at the back of the whale’s head. This reservoir contains many gallons of spermaceti.

Dolphins, narwhals, and rorquals, all belong to the whale family. The rorquals have larger fins than the other whales. The blue whale is the largest of all the family.[81]The humpbacked whale is shorter and thicker than the other varieties, has a queerly shaped back fin, and large flippers.

FOOTNOTES:[78]See Nature Reader, No. 3, pp. 243-4.[79]Neck or nick, or notch. Notice etymology.[80]Aflukeis either half of the tail of a cetacean, so called from the resemblance of the tail to an anchor, as the teeth of an anchor are called flukes.[81]ThisBalænoptera sibbaldiigets its common name from its bluish gray color; it is supposed to be the largest of living animals.

[78]See Nature Reader, No. 3, pp. 243-4.

[79]Neck or nick, or notch. Notice etymology.

[80]Aflukeis either half of the tail of a cetacean, so called from the resemblance of the tail to an anchor, as the teeth of an anchor are called flukes.

[81]ThisBalænoptera sibbaldiigets its common name from its bluish gray color; it is supposed to be the largest of living animals.

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