Humpback Whales are baleen whales that have baleen, which means that they have no teeth and there are very long bones that hang from the top of its mouth so when it eats food, it puts it in its mouth, and uses its tongue to drain the water out so it can eat its food. It usually eats krill, which are like little shrimp and live in pods. It is pretty helpful, so they can protect the babies and they can help each other to herd in the krill into one big group and they can take turns to feed. They usually blow bubbles of air at the krill, probably to stun the crustaceans. The leader is usually the oldest female.

The humpback whales has two homes. It lives in the north pacific near Canada for the winter and the Caribbean Sea for the summer(which doesn’t really make sense). The mate in the north and give birth in the south since the gestation time is nine months, like a human. The females, or the cows, are fought over by the bulls, or the males. They usually see who is the strongest, or if fighting is too much, they will try to get next to the female and be the first one to mate with her, so they can pass their genes to the next generation. After nine months, the females give birth to a baby that weighs a couple tons. The mother helps to get the baby to the surface so it can take its first breath of air, since it’s a mammal, not a fish. And like a mammal, the calf, or the baby, drinks its mother’s milk. And since whales breathe air, it doesn’t actually sleep. During the night, it will sort of doze and will go back to the surface for air.

Humpbacks have lots of behaviors, like breaching, tail slapping and fin slapping. When they breach, the bodies almost come out all the way and they fall back into the water. When they are tail or fin slapping, they raise their flukes, or flippers, or their tail and slap it against the water. Scientists don’t know why they do it, but it is a spectacular sight to tourists everywhere. The scientists usually record the markings on the dorsal fin, the flukes, the tail, and on the whole whale, so they can keep a record to see when it mates, where it lives, when it reproduces, which pod it is in, and other information that is necessary.

Humpback whales are known for the noises that it can produce, like clicks and whistles. It can produce more than 40 tones, and each pod has a special call used to locate each other. People are working on decoding their messages of communication and their pod’s call is recorded to see where each pod is. And more people have been working with the whales since they used to be hunted to extinction for their blubber, oil, meat, and bones. They were dwindling in numbers until people finally got into the act to saving these gentle creatures and they are reproducing successfully. Also, hunting humpbacks is illegal in most countries.

Return to my homepage

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page