Whales and dolphins (cetaceans)

Orca: Although a lot of people think whales are fish, they are actually mammals: they breathe air into lungs, they are warm-blooded animals, they feed their young with milk produced by mammary glands, and they have hair.

Orca: Although a lot of people think whales are fish, they are actually mammals: they breathe air into lungs, they are warm-blooded animals, they feed their young with milk produced by mammary glands, and they have hair.

© Robert Bingham - Free for educational use

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  • Orca: Although a lot of people think whales are fish, they are actually mammals: they breathe air into lungs, they are warm-blooded animals, they feed their young with milk produced by mammary glands, and they have hair.
  • Blue whale: Whales are amongst the largest animals to have lived on earth. The blue whale is the largest mammal ever, stretching across 30 m in length and weighing up to 180 tons.
  • The Fluke of a humpback whale: In order to move, whales must strike vertically with their fluke. Whereas fish have a vertical fluke, whales, on the other hand, have a horizontal fluke. This is a good way to distinguish the two groups.
  • Southern Right Whale: This picture shows the head of a southern right whale, one of the fattest whale species. The
  • Sperm Whale: Whales and dolphins have a unique respiratory system, allowing them to stay underwater for long periods of time without having to breathe. Some whales, such as the sperm whale and various beaked whales, can stay underwater for up to two hours.
  • Teeth of a stranded pilot whale: Toothed whales, or
  • Humpback whale: Baleen whales filter their food as flamingos do. To separate plankton from sea water, they close their mouth and raise their tongue towards the palate in order to create pressure strong enough to push the water through the 'comb' of their baleen plates.
  • Krill: The main food source for several species of baleen whales is the krill, especially around Antarctica. Krill are shrimp-like marine invertebrate animals that constitute an important biomass of the oceans upon which many animals feed.
  • Fin whale: Whales are social animals and communicate with each other by using lyrical sounds which are extremely loud and far reaching. In fact, their wave length is so long that the sound can actually be heard many miles away, even thousands of miles away in the blue whale's case.
  • Minke whale: Cetaceans have a fully conscious respiration (while it is automatic in terrestrial mammals). For this reason, only one side of the brain sleeps at a time, meaning that whales are never completely asleep.

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Teacher Koen Meirlaen performs the experiment at the Princess Elisabeth station in Antarctica.

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