Encyclopedia of Animals. Whale - records in the animal world Whale - description and characteristics

A family of small sperm whales grazes near the thirtieth parallel, northwest of Guadalupe Island and south of California's Channel Islands. Nine hundred miles separate the whales from the area where the males fought in early January; in reality, the whales - both old and young - traveled a much longer distance, since they did not move in a straight line. They have now joined such a large herd that from the ship it appears as if white fountains of steam cover the entire western horizon.

The sky in the north is darkening. The day is approaching evening. Two males swim side by side for a minute, then the one with a white round spot the size of a plate (a scar from an old wound) on its back notices the female and turns in after her. The male and female swim side by side for several hours, sometimes he touches her fin with his fin, or touches her with his tail, or presses his side to her. Both are silent. Neither the male nor the female hunts. They do not dive, but remain under water for a long time. Finally, the male rises slightly higher than the female and carefully presses against her back. Then he lags behind and follows her for about five minutes. There is no doubt that it is the male who is the active party. So he picks up speed and, as he runs, presses against the female’s belly, then overtakes her and turns over, showing her his belly, then his back again. Then he rushes in front of the whale, spreading his fins to the sides, and takes unusual poses, trying to attract the attention of the female. The pace of his dance quickens. The female responds to the male's advances: she turns upside down, and the male swims over her, pressing himself against her excited body. Then the whales swim side by side again; The male grabs the female by the jaw. They rub their heads, click their jaws, bump their foreheads. This continues for half an hour.

A black cloud is growing in the northern part of the sky, and on the horizon the sky is already merging with the sea in a shroud of rain.

Finally, the whales float vertically to the surface. Their black heads obscure the darkened sky. Pressing belly to belly, the whales touch each other with their fins; Water flows from their warm, clean sides. The intercourse continues for several seconds, then both plunge into the water with a deafening splash.

The herd does not stand still - it moves now to the north, now to the northwest, its average speed is about three knots; A pedestrian is walking at approximately the same speed. In a few more days, the seasonal excitement will be clearly noticeable in the movements of each whale. A male emerges - his blowhole expands and contracts convulsively, his eye seems to wink, muscles under a layer of fat suddenly gather his skin into unexpected folds. And our little sperm whale calmly sucks milk, and his mother warily stays away from the excited males.

Amid the wind and rain, another pair of whales copulates, this time in a horizontal position.

A storm comes, and the herd disappears into a continuous shroud of water.

The question arises, perhaps Leviathan...

cannot withstand such a wide raid for long and

such merciless destruction; may be,

it will eventually be completely destroyed by

all seas and oceans, and the last whale, like the last man,

will he smoke his last pipe and evaporate with its last smoke?

(Herman Melville)

Whaling has a long and complex history. Every now and then you come across disputes about the problem of property. Who owns the whales? What does "free hunting" mean in the ocean? We are talking about a fishery that brings in one hundred and fifty million dollars a year.

The pioneers of whaling were primitive hunters armed with very primitive weapons; and the last whale hunters will probably be our contemporaries, armed with equipment so cruel and so complex that special education will be required to work with it. The first whalers pursued whales, armed with spears tipped with bone or stone. These primitive harpoons were attached to floats made of wood or hides. Only after many days of struggle, which completely exhausted the whale, did the hunters dare to approach it in order to deliver the final, fatal blow. One day, some hunter, who did not bother to put his harpoon in order after another hunt, accidentally noticed that a piece of rotten meat stuck to the tip served as something like a talisman - it accelerated the death of the next victim. You and I know what blood poisoning is, but the hunter who first discovered the magical effect of a poisoned harpoon did not know about sepsis and only by pure chance became the first whaling shaman.

Some of the whalers of the northern tribes probably knew how to kill whales using poisons prepared from poisonous plants. The first experiment of this kind was, obviously, attempts to poison small fish in coastal backwaters. The beginning of the use of poison for hunting purposes goes back to ancient times.

The Japanese, who have always held the lead in the use of marine resources, knew how to weave special nets so strong that they could even catch large whales with their help.

It is not difficult to imagine how our uncivilized ancestors disposed of the fresh - or not so fresh - carcass of a killed whale. They ate meat. The fat was poured into vats and cauldrons - it was used for lighting and heating camps and dwellings. The bones were used to make tools and implements, as well as dishes. Tendons were replaced by threads.

Each new improvement in the whaling ship and whaling harpoon allowed hunters to go further and further from the shores. In the sixties of the nineteenth century, they finally came up with the idea of ​​filling a harpoon with explosives. This invention of Svend Foyn heralded the beginning of a new, final century of whaling. Foyne received a patent for his explosive projectile just before Christmas; that day he wrote in his diary: “Thank you, Lord. You and only You did this.”

I hope that a monument to Foyn will not be erected, but I fully understand people who, with a clear conscience, paid tribute to the man who enriched Norway - even at the cost of the greatest catastrophe for whales. The Americans killed the first sperm whale in 1712, when a whaling ship from New England, hunting a real right whale in coastal waters, was blown out to sea by a storm. The American whaling fleet reached its peak in 1846: it then included seven hundred and thirty-five ships - sloops, schooners, brigs, barks and others. Once proud of its whaling fleet, the United States now has only one whale processing base left in California.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the most important products of whaling were blubber and whalebone. When Pennsylvania's first oil well gushed in 1859, it was a devastating blow to the whale oil trade: oil was no longer considered the best way to light homes. Whalebone (which fetched $5,000 a ton in 1897 because it was used to make corsets) was replaced by plastic in the twentieth century. However, even today bones, entrails and other products of whale hunting are widely used, and the meat is still used for food; in Japan its annual consumption is more than one hundred thousand tons.

In 1904, Christian Larsen founded a whaling station on the island of South Georgia - and the great devastation of Antarctica began: the fishery that unfolded in the southern polar waters claimed more than a million whales. In 1923, whaling was finally freed from the need to rely on coastal bases: now whalers mainly hunt from floating factories, which are attached to various auxiliary vessels. Such whaling fleets ply international waters for months without entering ports. Throughout the hunting season, day and night, whalers kill whales and transport their carcasses to floating factories for processing. According to the latest information available to me, there are currently more than two hundred and fifty such special courts.

Man never tires of looking for easier and cheaper ways to kill whales: he tried to poison them with strychnine, cyanide drugs and curare, he tried to kill them with electric shock; he searches for them in the ocean from special planes and helicopters connected by radio with the whalers. Whalers are now equipped with a special locator system that allows them to detect whales even at night, in complete darkness. A special installation, the so-called “whale scarecrow”, exhausts the whales, causing them to stampede with the help of ultrasound - and tired whales are easier to deal with. How will such human technology develop further? Maybe we will have to use space technology to search for the last whale? Or will we try to attract him by playing a film underwater that records the call of a whale looking for its mate, or the cry of a baby whale calling for its mother?

I hope I won't be misunderstood. I welcome every invention that makes it possible to kill more cheaply, more hygienically and more humanely. But if we use new inventions irresponsibly and uncontrollably, future generations will rightly condemn us for destroying the greatest creature that ever lived on Earth.

The last Steller's cow on Earth died just twenty-seven years after the discovery of the Commander Islands. She was bludgeoned to death in the shallow waters of the Bering Sea. Weighing more than four tons, the animal was the last of one of three species of the only order of marine mammals that feeds on seaweed. We will never know many of the secrets of the structure of this animal’s body. What helped the sea cow survive extremely cold winters? What mechanisms helped her cope with the high concentration of salts in her food? How did she defend herself from her enemies? We will not learn about many other features of the structure and behavior of this animal, but having lost the opportunity to study the body of the Steller's cow, we have closed ourselves another way to understanding the processes occurring in the human body.

All species of animals, and especially highly specialized animals, are a treasury of knowledge from which man draws clues to various mysteries. The complexity of an animal’s body itself is the key to its greatest value for humanity. Not a single scientific laboratory, no matter what means it has, will be able to design and produce even a hair from the face of a sea cow.

If you treat whales not as unique living organisms, but simply as fat reservoirs and protein reserves, then, of course, you can do without whales. Let's kill all the whales and eat plankton, which forms the basis of the ocean's food pyramid. Instead of every kilogram of whale meat

we will get a ton of microscopic plants from the sea; let sea hay become our food! Just keep in mind that it will have the appropriate taste, and it will not be cheap to collect it from the sea: you cannot drag hay onto the deck in the form of a compact, perfectly packaged, ready-to-eat, fifty-ton whale carcass.

Over thirty years, the world population of blue whales has decreased a hundred times - to one thousand animals. From a whaling perspective, this species of whale no longer exists on Earth. Not only minke whales, but also many other species of whales were subjected to predation in the early sixties of this century - both in the northern and southern hemispheres. Currently, in the northern waters of the World Ocean, four species of cetaceans are becoming extinct faster than they are reproducing: the blue whale, the humpback whale, the fin whale and the sperm whale. Today, only three countries still engage in pelagic whaling, and the profitability of this fishery is highly questionable. The average size of whales harvested is decreasing all the time, so more and more whales have to be killed. The number of whales caught on average per day of fishing is also steadily decreasing, and this fact once again confirms what we know very well: whales are disappearing from the World Ocean. The annual catch of whales in Antarctica has so far amounted to about fifteen thousand heads. In order to prevent the complete extermination of whales, this production will have to be limited to two thousand animals per year for many years.

Only international agreements and international control can save whales from tragic death. However, we are too jealous and suspicious, and large countries are also guided primarily by military and economic considerations. Back in 1963, it was decided to establish international control over whaling, but the governments that signed the agreement were extremely reluctant to implement it.

A proposal made by John Galland of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) offers hope - albeit rather faintly. According to Galland's plan, the United Nations, or more precisely, the International Whaling Commission, should take care of the fate of the whales. The activities of this commission will focus on three main aspects - limits and quotas for the production of whales of each species; limiting annual production for each country; and verifying compliance with these restrictions. The size of the maximum permissible quota will depend on the results of biological research, and the success of this plan will depend on our goodwill, our common sense and respect for Life

...Are we ready to follow Galland's plan?

Notes:

Arthur F. McBride "Evidence for Echolocation in Cetaceans." (McBride, Deep Sea Research, vol. 3, pp. 153-154, London, 1956. Handwritten notes on echolocation phenomena in dolphins prepared for publication by William E. Sheville after the author's death).

This brief history of whaling is based on many sources, the main ones being: I. J. Slijper, The Whales (London, 1962); F. S. Fraser, “Whales and Whaling” (see Antarctic Exploration: A Review of British Scientific Advances, edited by R. Priestley, R. Adey and J. Robin. London, 1964);

N. A. Mackintosh, Whale Stocks (London, 1965); John Galland, "Resource Use by Whaling in the Antarctic" (Journal du Conseil, vol. 31, pp. 330-341, Copenhagen, 1968).

Vladimir TRONIN

Miracle Yudo fish-whale

Whale Tales

The history of the relationship between man and whales is sad and instructive: for hundreds of years, people exterminated whales - the largest animals on our planet. Currently, some of the giants of the seas are under threat of complete extinction.
The fate of whales has long been a source of concern. People finally realized that the lives of these huge and defenseless animals were in their hands. In 1946, the International Commission for the Conservation of Whale was organized. In 1963, fishing for humpback whales was banned, and in 1965, for blue whales. Later, some species of cetaceans were included in the RED BOOK. At the end of the seventies, whaling was completely stopped.
The ban on whaling is a gratifying fact. Restoring their numbers will allow people to better understand the sea - after all, to this day our knowledge about the sea and its inhabitants is extremely scarce. We know little about the whales themselves - scientific information about them comes down mainly to extensive works on the structure of their body, their internal organs and reflections on the physiology of whales. Almost nothing is known about the habits of whales, behavior and habits - after all, the life of the giants had to be judged by those few moments when they came to the surface of the sea. The study of these animals made it possible to establish that all cetaceans are divided into baleen and toothed. Baleen whales include smooth whales, minke whales (fin whales, sei whales, blue whales) and gray whales, and toothed whales include sperm whales, beaked whales, dolphins and river dolphins.
For several years I studied whales: I visited many seas on various search vessels, worked in the tropics, in the Arctic and Antarctic. And now I want to tell you about the life of these beautiful animals so that you can appreciate their perfection: strength, beauty and amazing adaptability to life in a dense, mobile environment.

Huge whales have always seemed like some kind of miracle to people. The life of these giants - from birth to death - passes in the water column. Whales appear on the surface of the sea only to take a breath of air. Or, as is rarely seen, they lie resting after storms. The size of the giants is enormous: a medium-sized blue whale is larger than the largest prehistoric lizard! For a long time now there has not been a single animal on earth comparable in size to whales.
Incomprehensible, secretive life, bizarre forms, enormous strength and power - the fountains are visible for many kilometers! Who is this?! Giant fish?! “These are monsters, sea devils!” thought our distant ancestors. And stories about the monsters of the oceans passed from mouth to mouth of all peoples associated with the life of the sea. There were grounds for fantastic tales: in those distant times, people met whales more often than today, and any medium-sized whale is much longer than the length of the hull of the ships of the pharaohs, Viking ships and the first sailing ships. There were legends about the miracle fish-whales among the peoples of the Russian North.
Most likely, the heroes of Pomors' tales were right whales, which were found off the coast of the White and Barents Seas. The size of these whales is colossal - twenty meters! A huge black smooth “drop”, more than six meters across at the widest point of the body, a tail the size of a large room in a peasant house. This is what a smooth whale looks like. The head of these whales is equal to a third of the body length. If you open your mouth and remove the rows of whisker plates hanging from the upper jaw - each whisker is from four to two and a half meters - then you can ride into the whale’s mouth while sitting on a horse, which means you can “drive in” on a ship!
Popular fantasy has not greatly embellished the power, strength and capabilities of polar whales. The right whale, of course, could not swallow ships (its food is plankton), and it cost him nothing to overturn a small ship with a blow of his tail. The creators of the legends were wrong about only one thing - whales are not fish, but warm-blooded animals, mammals, they feed their many-meter-long offspring with milk.
As time went. People mastered the seas and oceans. In the middle of the 19th century, ships with harpoon cannons, agile on the waves, appeared. And the first victims of the whalers were the clumsy smooth whales: a successful shot, and forty tons of fat on the line...
And now, no matter how much you stand on the seashore, you will no longer see the double fountain.
The centuries-old history of human encounters with right whales is reflected on the pages of many books, and most often there are stylized images of right whales. And artists from century to century make the same mistakes: they paint whales rising high above the waves, “baring their whiskers” and releasing fountains in the form of a wide, curved stream of water. Right whales have forked fountains! Whales never “bar their whiskers.” They just can't do it. In order to close their heavy lower jaw, whales have to lie on their side underwater or even turn over with their belly up. Whales come to the surface with their mouths closed. At that moment, when the whale rose above the sea as much as possible, the fountain was no longer there, it dissipated and turned into a light smoke. At the same time, the whale’s nostrils (blowhole) are wide open, and he inhales.
People almost exterminated right whales without having time to study these amazing and absolutely defenseless animals well enough.
Those whales are luckier that spend the summer in the seas less developed by humans - the Bering and Chukchi seas. Very rarely, but even now you can see these animals there. And I was lucky: I have seen more than once how the sea boils, and a miraculous smooth whale comes to the surface, rams the waves and, waving its huge tail goodbye, goes back into the depths.
If you watch whales for a long time without disturbing them, you are amazed at their calmness and indifference to everything around them. The animals' lazy movements seem clumsy. But sometimes you can see how a hundred-ton hero quickly jumps out of the water. One day, literally from under the nose of our ship, a giant whale flew out of the water! The twenty-meter, shiny, pitch-black monster froze for a moment above the blue sea, then the whale turned over in the air and hit the water with its whole body. I was deafened by a roar. The bow of the ship, where I was standing, was flooded with streams of water - a three-hundred-ton SRT (medium fishing seiner) was lifted high above the sea by a steep wave...

fin whales

My first encounter with whales was disappointing. It was in the northern waters of the Pacific Ocean.
The eighteen-day passage through a continuous storm exhausted the people, and at the end of the last day, when we entered the search area, there were only two left on the upper bridge: the observer and me.
The ship wearily crawled onto huge gray waves, a gusty wind rocked a dense veil of drizzle, dark, low-hanging clouds foreshadowed a stormy and cold night. I remember telling the observer that for years I had been dreaming and striving to see whales, and now for almost a month I saw only an angry and lifeless ocean.
- There are whales! - He pointed with his hand to the right of the course. - Two fin whales! They go towards Unimak.
I took binoculars, looked for a long time in the indicated direction and saw nothing but waves covered with dirty white strands. And the observer - an experienced whaler - kept pushing me to the side:
- Yes, there they are! They come out... a fountain!.. a second one!
We changed course, went towards the whales, and after a quarter of an hour I finally saw two small fluffy fountains disappearing quickly in the wind and the dark backs of the whales. The whales were in a hurry - two small pitiful lumps of life, barely taking a breath of air, tried to escape from the blows of the elements to the depths. Here is a new exit, and the waves toss the whales around easily and carelessly, and again they quickly go under the water. It seemed to me that the whales were uncomfortable, they felt bad, they were defenseless against the powerful blows of the waves and the strong cold wind. And these are giants?
In the dark we entered the Bering Sea, bunkered in Bristol Bay and went back into the ocean through Unimak. That night I could not sleep for a long time: the vision of a huge sea, playing with everything that lives in it, did not leave me for a long time.
The next day, when I went out on deck at dawn, the sea was different. I saw blue and blue beauty - the ocean played with a brilliant blue gentle swell, milky white strands of clouds slowly floated in the cool blue of the sky.
- Let's go whale watching! - the observer shouted to me from the bridge.
I went up to the bridge and saw the fountains. White slender geysers emerged one after another from the blue three miles from our ship.
- Six fin whales. “We’ve been going to them for an hour,” said the observer.
I quickly figured it out in my mind - translating the speed of our ship into kilometers and the distance that remained to go to the whales, it turned out: the fountains of fin whales are visible twenty-three and a half kilometers away. Such is the strength of their lungs!
“We’ll mark,” I told the observer.
Tagging - hunting whales with a double-barreled shotgun - took us almost half the day. And the fin whales showed us the game of beauty, strength and amazing power of life!
The very first whale in half an hour exhausted the sailor standing at the helm. Our SRT was “the last of the Mohicans” - with a manual steering wheel, and it was necessary to turn the three-hundred-ton ship by hand. Standing on the forecastle with a gun, I felt the deck trembling under my feet, how hard the engine was working, and saw how easily, effortlessly the whale walked away from us. He circled the surface of the sea for a long time. I made a successful shot when the whale suddenly came out literally a meter from the side of the ship, and... I did not notice any reaction from the whale to the blow of a quarter-meter steel “needle”!
I looked in amazement at the huge body of the whale, calmly and smoothly sinking into the depths.
The second fin whale was much larger than the first, almost half the hull of our ship in length. And he behaved differently. Having brought us within a little over a hundred meters, the whale “switched on” its speed. A quarter of an hour of chasing him showed that our “ceremonial” ten knots are sheer nonsense for a whale. Raising huge breakers, the fin whale quickly left us.
We returned to the other four whales. And it took us over two more hours to tag them.
Filling out my observation diary after this “hunt,” I could not stop the slight trembling in my hands - a feeling of power, namely the power of life, touched me.

Whales are a magnificent result of the improvement of one of the branches of the evolution of life. Each of the fin whales I saw exceeded seventy tons in weight and had excellent control of their body. It’s hard to even imagine how many problems nature had to solve in order to create such a multi-toned, complex, superbly balanced and amazingly adapted living “mechanism” for living in a dense and constantly moving environment.

ON THE SURFACE OF THE SEA

In the whaling jargon there are many words that characterize the whale and its behavior, and these words simultaneously serve as a reflection of the mood that arises in literally everyone on the ship when watching whales. “Good look: two locomotives!” - shouts Mars. This means that the ship is heading for right whales - whalers treat these whales with emphatic respect.
Shout: “There are two dogs scurrying three miles to the right!” - means that the observer saw sei whales. The emergence of a large sperm whale near a ship always causes the following exclamation: “Wow!.. Bogodul!..” And if then it is said: “That’s it! Gave him a tail! We will spin on our heels,” this means that the sperm whale went under water for an hour and a half and will come out far from the dive site, and in order to approach the whale in time the next time it emerges, the ship must literally “spin on its heels” all this time. , and at the right moment rush to any point over a distance of several miles.
And what can such a phrase tell you: “There are butterflies above the sea!” We are talking about humpback whales: when diving deep, humpback whales always show their tail fin above the water - a “butterfly”.
Here’s another cry: “Bottles!” - a group of bottlenose men rose from the depths. “A mina is walking right on your nose!” - the ship is heading for minke whales. Whalers treat these small - only ten meters in length - nimble whales with an undisguised feeling of sympathy: the appearance of minke whales always brings a smile to their faces.
You need to spend several years at sea to feel and understand the precision and imagery of the professionals’ jargon. A short, precise phrase and expressive gesture from the person who first saw the whales helps to instantly assess the situation: in each individual case, approaching the whales requires different maneuvers and speed of the vessel.
How can someone who sees whales for the first time recognize a whale and evaluate its behavior? If there is a double fountain above the sea, a huge dark barrel-shaped body, and when immersed in the water the whale shows a wide, somewhat rounded tail fin, then you can rest assured that this is a hundred-ton giant, a smooth whale.
If there are a lot of fluffy fountains above the waves, and when approaching the whales you clearly see their huge angular heads of brown, almost dark brown color, the whales one after another go under the water, and each of them, at the moment of diving, raises its tail fin high above the sea, then Sperm whales passed through the sea.
Once you see gray whales, you will remember them forever - they are exactly gray. These whales most often walk the sea in large groups - from tens to hundreds of animals in each group.
If you see a whale that hunches over and shows a “butterfly” every time it dives, it’s a humpback whale.
But encounters with blue whales, fin whales, sei whales and minke whales sometimes cause controversy even among whalers. To recognize the species of minke whales, you need to remember the following: blue whales have the smallest dorsal fin of all minke whales, and it is “pushed back” closer to the tail of the body. When diving, these whales “hump” the back third of their body just a little and freeze for a moment above the water in a curved position; sometimes they raise their caudal fin above the waves.
Fin whales have higher dorsal fins than blue whales, and when diving they bend slightly - they go under the water at a slight angle. Sei whales have strongly curved dorsal fins, these whales are swift, they literally spread over the water, moving forward, and at the same time they slowly, almost imperceptibly to the eye, sink with their entire body, slightly leaning forward.
Minke whales are similar to small fin whales. When watching minke whales, of course, we should not forget that blue whales are much larger than fin whales, almost twice as large as sei whales, and minke whales are almost four times smaller than blue whales.
All the signs of whales listed above are the ABCs for beginners. Literally all whales often have many individual differences - both in appearance and in the manner of their behavior. Twice I have encountered fin whales whose dorsal fins were almost the same as those of humpback whales. And more than once I saw how humpback whales, without humping, go under the water - the manner of their immersion in the water was surprisingly reminiscent of the movements of fin whales.
Once I observed this: a smooth whale came to the surface and went under the water very smoothly, rising above the sea not high - its movements and manners were exactly the same as those of a sei whale, but only too slow. The surprise of everyone was so great that we deviated from our course and came close to the whale. It turned out to be a whale whose baby was soon to be born.
Sometimes encounters with whales make you reconsider long-established opinions about their behavior, lifestyle and habits.
A group of sperm whales is always whales of different ages, led by a strong, seasoned male. Sometimes there are groups of these whales consisting of middle-aged sperm whales; sometimes females and young animals gather in groups. According to all the “whale laws,” old male sperm whales never gather together - they live out their lives alone and do not tolerate the presence of anyone on “their territory.” And yet, in December 1963, in the waters of Antarctica, we met more than twenty old sperm whales in a relatively small area. They stayed in dense groups, six to eight whales in each.
What made these “inhumans” come together?
Blue whales and minke whales. These whales differ from each other not only in size, but also in their lifestyle: vomit whales are ocean whales, minke whales are called bay whales. These whales have completely different temperaments: blue whales behave very respectably, minke whales are agile, playful and easy to turn. The average speed of a blue whale is almost equal to the maximum speed of which minke whales are capable. I once watched blue whales swimming accompanied by four minke whales. They literally sailed side by side and went beyond the horizon together. What brought these so different whales together?

AT CAPE NAVARIN

ORCA WHALES

Under the bright sun, under the blue surface of the sea, a tragedy took place. Seven against one! A large sea lion seal tried to fight off seven angry killer whales. But what could he do?! Predators “processed” the sea lion quite intelligently. One of the killer whales, grabbing him by the hind flippers, pulled the seal into the depths; two were spinning in front of his muzzle - they did not allow the sea lion to bite the one that was drowning him; the rest swam nearby - waiting. The sea lion was gasping for breath, opening his mouth wide - he was choking. And then two killer whales immediately attacked him: one tormented the seal’s back, the other instantly bit off one of the front flippers. Brown blood stains appeared on the water.
All this happened overboard our ship. And neither the screams of people on deck, nor the blows of hooks on the backs of the killer whales interrupted the busy work of the killer whales.
Yes, killer whales are terrible predators. The largest predators on our planet. Their slate-black bodies can be seen flashing above the waters in all seas and oceans. Ripping open the surface of the water with a high, narrow dorsal fin, they fly above the sea. Killer whales are constantly on the move - they are looking for prey. Speed, intelligence and strength - that's what killer whales are. Try to survive against a pack of such opponents!
Killer whales are not sharks. You won’t scare them with a hand slapping the water or a blow to the nose with a baton. And they hunt their victims very calculatedly and cunningly.
I witnessed such a hunt. About three dozen predators, divided into groups of three or four killer whales each, patrolled an area of ​​approximately a square mile. They were waiting for prey. And then a small whale appeared on the surface of the sea - slightly longer than the largest of the killer whales - the beaked whale. The nearest group immediately went towards him. The killer whales were late - no more than a hundred meters were between them and the whale when it went under the water, to a depth inaccessible to predators. But the killer whales continued to persistently circle near the surface of the sea - they maintained a distance between individual groups exactly such that no matter where the whale surfaced, it would be close to the group of killer whales.
They “took” the whale half an hour later, on its second exit. One of the killer whales grabbed the beaked whale by the tail fin and pulled it down, the other two began to bite its head in the blowhole area - they drowned the whale, not allowing it to breathe after a long dive. Without breathing, leaving part of the tail fin in the mouth of the killer whale, the whale went under the water. When the whale surfaced again, not three, but a dozen predators were already waiting for him. They let him breathe only once - they drowned him and began to tear him to pieces under water. Only a shot from a harpoon cannon stopped them - one of the killer whales huddled on the line.
The ingenuity of killer whales when they need to get food has no limits! In Antarctic waters, they hunt penguins, and some of these birds “flying” underwater do not manage to escape from the encirclement. If even a couple of killer whales see a lone seal on a small ice floe, it is doomed. One, suddenly peeking out of the water, will frighten him; The seal jumps out of fear into the water, where the second killer whale is waiting for it. Polar explorer Robert Scott's killer whales tried to steal dogs from the ice!
Killer whales, like many whales, having had their fill, begin to play. And often with live toys! I saw killer whales playing with seals three times. The cat, distraught with fear, constantly jumps out of the water. The killer whales help him - they toss him with their noses. The cat's tricks obviously delight them wildly - they jump out next to him. One can only imagine what it’s like for a cat when a pair of huge predators are not a meter behind him, either under water or in the air! Having played enough, they leave the “toy” and give it life.
And in aquariums, killer whales are very understanding and affectionate. There has never been a case where a killer whale living in captivity has bitten anyone, be it a person or a dolphin.
So, a predator is not always a predator? Or maybe they understand that they will have a bad time in the concrete “lagoons” if they dare to show their tough character? Who knows... On the open sea, it is still better to communicate with killer whales while standing on the deck of a ship.

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE DEPTH

A large sperm whale lies on the surface of the sea. Its body looks like a thick log covered with brown bark, but already polished with water. The whale lies without signs of life, swaying slightly on the waves. A trembling ran through the whale’s body - the sperm whale “stretched” and quickly swam across the waves. Then he snorted - began to gush, showing his huge head above the crests of the waves, and “gave his tail” - he went into the depths.
An hour later, the sperm whale surfaced and, having released at least thirty fluffy fountains, having ventilated its lungs well and inhaled, again plunged steeply under the water. An hour later the same thing happened again.
What draws the giant there, to a depth of a kilometer or more, into pitch darkness, where the pressure can instantly turn any land animal into a cake?
We can only fantasize about this.
In the black thickness of the salty water, huge phosphorescent highlights and bright silhouettes flash silently and quickly - the moving shadows of giant squids. Piercing the dense darkness, squids rush through accumulations of plankton. Myriads of tiny organisms, irritated by the intrusion into their lives, flare up with bright fire and illuminate bizarre animals: long, flat bodies that look like multi-meter translucent tubes, a barely visible head in the middle, two huge bulging eyes looking back towards elongated strong tentacles, dotted with rows of terrible suckers. Squids hunt large deep-sea fish and their relatives - smaller squids, only about a meter in size. Here one of the giant squids freezes, filling the cavity of its huge body with water. The squid is preparing to attack its next victim. But suddenly he felt that he was being groped by ultrasound - invisible rays coming from the huge head, the spermaceti lens-gun of a sperm whale falling on him from above. The ultrasound slightly stunned the squid; it did not have time to dodge. Two rows of strong teeth squeezed it - pressed the base of the tentacles to the hard palate of the whale's mouth.
And the battle began! Two monsters swirled in a deadly dance! Explosions of light in the endless darkness illuminate for a moment the picture of this titanic battle: the squid wrapped its tentacles around the strong body of the whale, the suckers dug into the strong skin, the beak tormented the sperm whale’s head, and the whale squeezed its jaws more and more, tearing the tentacles from the squid’s body. And so the whale, tearing out two huge living ropes, quickly went up to where there was air. Two whip-like arms struck the winner's body with fading force.
The sperm whale went up, and the squid planned to the bottom - there the lobsters and crabs would deal with it.
Once I happened to see a piece of a giant squid tentacle in the mouth of a sperm whale that had just surfaced. Many times, whalers removed from the womb of eighteen-meter sperm whales beaks and fragments of tentacles of squid almost the same size.
Sperm whales are strong and self-confident animals. They are perfectly adapted to life in the water column and, if not disturbed, feel great, at ease and, simply put, live, doing whatever they please. More than once I had the opportunity to observe amazing pictures of their lives.
...We have walked thousands of miles; behind the stern were the cold waves of the Sea of ​​Japan, the warm blue of the subtropics and the hot equator. We passed the Sunda Strait - the Indian Ocean greeted us with the gentle shine of a gentle swell, clear skies and little wind. Day after day, the whaler quickly glided across the sea, the course being pure south.
Far to the port side, a sultry haze lifted the dark strip of the Australian coast above the horizon. Frigates soared over the sea, flying fish fanned out from under the stem, white-winged albatrosses hung over the masts and, without a single flap of a wing, quickly went into the endless distance. Perfect weather. Perfect visibility. And not a single whale!
On the day when we “turned left” - towards the D'Urville Sea, in the midday sun the whaler began to drift. The first station began - measuring water temperature and salinity, taking plankton samples. Whalers are a merry people! The garland of bathometers went under the water, accompanied by the chief mate’s joke: “Attention! Let’s start studying the living conditions of whales without even seeing half a quarter of a whale!” And at this time, the voice of one of the sailors was heard behind us: “Goodbye!” I looked back: a large male sperm whale was walking vertically away from the ship with its tail into the sea. About five minutes later, in almost the same place, the whale jumped out of the water again: it took off perpendicular to the surface of the sea, rose above the waves by almost two-thirds of its body length, froze for a moment and sank with its tail into the depths. The stunning sight froze me for a moment, and I caught the whale too late - when I developed the film, only the whale’s head was visible on the negative.
Sperm whales are masters of all sorts of tricks. For example, the following games are described: a whole herd of sperm whales suddenly stands upright, heads down, and, putting their tails above the water, the whales begin to slap them together on the surface. Or on moonlit nights, sperm whales gather in a “heap” and make such a noise that it can be heard for many miles. The motive for such collective games is some kind of “emotional factors”. Over the years of working at sea, I have been convinced more than once that emotions and a “feeling of camaraderie” play a big role in the lives of these whales.
One day, all the whales swimming within a radius of two or three miles from the scene of the tragedy rushed to the aid of a sperm whale we had harpooned. For about half an hour, the whaler was literally captured by more than a hundred sperm whales, the closest of which pushed his mortally wounded comrade out of the water and helped him take a breath of air.
Twice we met groups of sperm whales in which there were only cripples - whales with a curved and inverted lower jaw, whales with only one half or no tail fin at all, lopsided and humpback whales. It seems that the dull-witted “realize” that it is better for the inferior to stick together - it is easier to feed themselves and fight off enemies.
Sperm whales are polygamous animals. Most often you can see a herd of these whales in the sea. And the head of such a herd is a powerful male sperm whale. A family of sperm whales is an impressive sight: dozens of whales busily and purposefully follow their leader; womb sounds merge with the noise of the sea - the “sighs” of whales; Raising their heavy heads high above the waves, the whales release fountains. So they inhaled and one after another go under the water for a long time. Tens of minutes pass and the whales surface. There is no doubt: the masters of the deep sea dealt with squid and deep-sea fish underwater.

FUN WHALES

QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS

One day it happened that we had to drift in one of the straits connecting the Bering Sea with the Pacific Ocean. Dusk was already falling on the sea. The wind and waves carried the ship in a northerly direction; on both sides of us, the horizon was obscured by gently sloping dark triangles of islands.
I went to the cabin, but after a quarter of an hour I suddenly noticed that the sound of the sea had intensified and its character had changed: some strong extraneous sounds had crept into the general monotonous, familiar hiss of the waves. I climbed onto the bridge and saw an extraordinary sight: several thousand killer whales were passing through the strait! They walked along the sea in a huge, disorderly crowd. I stood on the bridge and literally bit my elbows: I had the opportunity to take a rare photo, but it was already at the end of the day - the rearguard of the killer whale squad passed us in the dark.
A few days later, while we were drifting north of Nunivak Island, several hundred gray whales passed five miles away in a northwest direction. And again we could not move, and only binoculars helped me see that these whales walked through the sea differently from killer whales - they swam in a wide front.
And the third time, when I watched the passage of a group of fin whales, we did not have the opportunity to approach the whales - we stood “tied” to a kilometer-long garland of instruments lowered overboard. There were more than fifty fin whales, they walked very quickly and emerged from the sea in a dense group - literally shoulder to shoulder.
I was unlucky again. It was in Antarctica. From the high stern of the base, going to collect the whales killed during the day, I watched as many thousands of minke whales released fountains near the horizon.
But what does it mean - unlucky? Meeting whales gathered in one very large group and going about their own business is a rare occurrence! I had to work with a man who devoted more than a quarter of a century to whaling and had never seen a single large herd of whales making passages.
Why do whales make multi-day journeys across the sea? The main reason is the search for food.
All species of whales also make so-called seasonal transitions: with the onset of summer, whales leave warm waters to the north (in the Southern Hemisphere - to the south), and with the approach of cold weather they return to the waters of the tropics and subtropics. Whales make such thousand-mile journeys not only in search of plankton and fish, but also in order to raise their young in warmer water - newborn whales have little body fat, and they can freeze in the cold sea.
The reasons for whale migrations are, in general, clear and fairly well studied. But how do whales, hundreds and thousands of miles apart from each other, manage to “agree” among themselves to get together and go traveling? By what signal and how do several thousand killer whales gather? What is the role of leaders in such huge herds and do they exist? And how do whales navigate during long journeys?
The last question is the most difficult of all, and a definite answer to it has not yet been received. After all, the ocean is one-sided - there is nothing in the water column to “catch onto” in order to check the course. And yet, the roamers of the seas, male sperm whales, with exceptional precision go to the banks - to areas of high underwater mountains, where there are many squid and bottom fish. Minke whales, having traveled many thousands of miles, come to their favorite bays every year. Blue whales walk in a straight line for many days and always accurately come to the “spots” of plankton.
In the chosen direction, whales take the shortest route - in a straight line. This is evidenced by observations of “walking” whales. “Walking” whalers call solitary whales or small groups of whales going in any direction. I had the opportunity to follow the “running” fin whales - we walked, keeping a considerable distance, walked without disturbing the whales. And the result of the observations was always the same: the yaws to the sides of the “general course” of fin whales were always minimal.
How does a whale sense direction? Why is it not knocked off course by waves, wind or currents? There are no answers to these questions yet.

Whales are amazing creatures. Their ancestors appeared on Earth 55 million years ago - long before the appearance of the first man.

Despite the fact that whale hunting is prohibited by the laws of many countries, their destruction does not stop. For Russia, this problem is especially relevant - the seas of our country are home to dozens of species of whales, dolphins, and seals, many of which are endangered.

The most interesting facts from the life of whales are in the AiF.ru collection.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Whales are the largest animals in the world

On average, the length of a whale is from 22 to 27 meters, with females larger than males. The largest whale was caught in 1926: its length was 33 meters, and the animal weighed at least 150 tons. It is believed that blue whales were somewhat crushed as a result of predatory fishing, but in the past, when blue whales were more numerous, individuals up to 37 meters in length were found among them.

It is known that the average whale weighs as much as 2,700 people. The animal’s heart is the size of a car and weighs 600-700 kilos, and 8 thousand liters of blood are pumped through the whale’s vessels, the diameter of a water bucket. In addition, the blue whale is capable of producing the loudest sound of all living creatures - other whales are able to hear its low frequencies at a distance of more than 16,000 km.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Whales “hear” with their throats

Whales do not have the traditional hearing organs of animals - external ears. They hear through the lower jaw, from which sound travels to the middle and inner ear.

Since whales have poor eyesight and no sense of smell, hearing is the main sense for them, which helps them navigate underwater, communicate and get food. Therefore, ships and other noise made by people in the world's oceans cause a lot of inconvenience to whales.

A whale eats a million calories a day

For 8 months of the year, whales eat almost nothing and survive on accumulated fat. However, all summer they feed almost non-stop, absorbing up to three tons of food per day. The whale's diet mainly consists of algae and small crustaceans. Sometimes whales snack on small fish.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Whale tails are unique

Whale tails can be compared to human fingerprints. The furrow cuts, along with scars and spots of brown algae, create unique patterns on the whales' tails.

Whales and hippos shared common ancestors

The distant ancestors of whales were land animals that walked on four legs. Then they went to the ocean in search of more accessible and plentiful food. At first, the ancestors of whales - Pakicetus - hunted fish in shallow waters and returned to the shore to rest. But competition forced the animals to swim further and further into the depths of the ancient ocean, and the opportunity to return to land disappeared.

Molecular genetic data indicate that cetaceans are close relatives of artiodactyls, in particular hippopotamuses.

Whales can drown while sleeping

Whales can stay awake for three months if necessary.

And if they fall asleep, then only at a shallow depth near the surface of the water. Their weight, due to the high content of light adipose tissue in the body, slightly exceeds the specific gravity of water. Therefore, the sleeping whale sinks down very slowly. From time to time, the animal hits its tail in its sleep and rises to the surface. Then, after inhaling air, it slowly and passively sinks until the next blow with its tail.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Whales breathe oxygen

The blue whale inhales and exhales 1-4 times per minute when at rest, but can go without oxygen for two hours. Young whales breathe much more frequently than adults.

Whales inhale and exhale very quickly - almost simultaneously - due to the special structure of the respiratory tract. In 1 second, a blue whale inhales approximately 2 thousand liters of air; in total, the lungs of this giant can hold up to 14 cubic meters of air. While underwater, the blowhole was tightly closed with a valve.

A baby whale can reach 9 meters in length at birth. Mother's milk contains up to 50% fat, while it is rich in protein. Fat and protein make up half the weight of milk, making it very thick. During the day, the cub receives up to 90 liters of milk. By the age of one and a half years, it grows to 20 m in length and 45-50 tons of weight.

People believed that you could live in the stomach of a whale

In the old days there were many legends about how shipwrecked people were swallowed by whales and traveled for many months in the stomach of these animals.

In fact, they wouldn't even be able to get through the throat opening. The fact is that the diameter of a blue whale's pharynx does not exceed its navel (that is, the size of a saucer) or is slightly smaller than its eardrum (about the size of a small plate).

The only species of whale that a person can crawl into its throat is the sperm whale. However, its stomach is so acidic that it is simply impossible to survive in the belly of a whale.

Whales are talking

Whales that live a long time in captivity. For a long time this was considered a myth, but then scientists conducted an experiment on the beluga. The animal was trained to “speak” on command, put on a harness made of sensors and found out that the whale imitates human “speech” by sharply increasing the pressure in its nasal cavities and causing the phonic lips to vibrate - special formations in the nasopharynx, with the help of which many cetaceans make sounds .

Whales are very peculiar mammals, which, due to their constant life in water, are more like fish. This group of animals has a characteristic appearance and at the same time has achieved significant diversity. Whales form a separate order of Cetaceans, but this term is a collective one. Usually this word refers to large species; small cetaceans have other names (dolphins, porpoises).

Humpback whale, or humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).

The most striking distinguishing feature of these animals is their size. Indeed, all species of whales are simply giants of the animal world. Even the smallest species (dwarf sperm whales, for example) reach a length of 2-3 m and a weight of 400 kg, and most species have a length of 5-12 m and a weight of several tons. The largest species, the blue whale, reaches a length of 33 m and weighs 150 tons! It is several times larger than even the largest dinosaurs. The blue whale is the largest living creature ever to inhabit our planet!

All species of whales are characterized by an elongated, streamlined body, a very short, inactive neck and a large head. The size of the head can vary greatly between species: in small whales it is 1/5 of the body length, in large baleen whales its size can reach 1/4, and in the sperm whale the head makes up 1/3 of the body. Based on the structure of their teeth, whales are divided into two suborders: baleen and toothed. Baleen whales have no teeth at all; they are replaced by giant horny plates that hang in the mouth like a fringe. They are called whalebone.

Baleen in the mouth of a whale.

Toothed whales have teeth, their shape and size vary between species. The structure of the jaws can also be different: in baleen whales the lower jaw is much larger than the upper and is similar to a ladle; in toothed whales, on the contrary, the upper jaw is larger or equal in size to the lower one. Such differences are associated with the nature of the diet of these animals.

The difference in size of the upper and lower jaws is clearly visible on the head of a humpback whale.

The brain size of whales is relatively large, but this is primarily due to the development of the parts of the brain responsible for hearing. Whales, like dolphins, have perfect echolocation abilities; they emit sounds of various frequencies and use their reflection (echo) to navigate in space, find food and communicate with each other. Just like dolphins, whales are susceptible to an unknown pathology - they can periodically wash ashore. The animals do this unconsciously (the ability of whales to commit suicide is nothing more than a stupid prejudice), but with such persistence that scientists are still puzzling over the reason for such strange behavior. Animals washed ashore are not always old or sick; moreover, sometimes, through the efforts of rescuers, they can be returned to the sea. Most likely, the root cause of such death is disruptions in the operation of the echo sounder caused by numerous radio sources (all modern navigation uses powerful sources and repeaters of radio waves). Such electromagnetic “noise” in the ocean confuses the giants and they approach the shores; moreover, accustomed to trusting their feelings, the whales stubbornly strive in the “right” direction until they run aground. Other sense organs in whales are poorly developed: the sense of smell is in its infancy, and vision is also rather weak.

On the top of the head there is a breathing hole - a blowhole. In more primitive baleen whales it consists of two openings (“nostrils”), in toothed whales there is only one opening. Interestingly, during exhalation, moist air from the lungs creates a kind of fountain, and its shape depends on the type of whale.

A blowhole with two nostrils on the head of a gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus).

The limbs of whales are arranged in a very unusual way. The front ones have turned into flattened fins, and their size can vary greatly among different species. For example, the fins of belted teeth and sperm whales are small, and they reach their greatest development in the humpback whale.

The long fins of a humpback whale resemble wings underwater.

But whales have no hind limbs at all; in their place in the lumbar spine there are only two small bones to which the muscles of... the genital organs are attached. The driving force in the whale's body is created by a powerful twin tail, but these are not modified hind legs, as some believe.

The powerful tail is used by whales for movement and protection.

The coloration of whales is varied, but discreet. More often, their body has a dark upper side and a lighter lower side; some species (Bryde's minke) may have clearly visible stripes on the underside of the head. Species such as the blue whale, gray whale, and sperm whale are uniformly gray or brown in color.

The beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) gets its name from its rare white skin color.

Whales are widespread throughout all oceans (and some seas) of the globe. They are found only in deep waters; as a rule, they do not enter bays, river mouths and similar shallow waters. Whales usually move freely across the ocean, but their movement is not chaotic. Each whale species has favorite breeding grounds that they visit during certain seasons. The rest of the time, whales fatten up, but do this in areas remote from their breeding grounds. Thus, whales migrate with a cyclicity of 1 year. When feeding, whales swim at a speed of 10-20 km/h, but in case of danger they switch to a cruising speed of 50 km/h. Adult males and non-breeding females stay alone, females with cubs, as well as all animals during the breeding season form herds of 5-15 individuals. There is a peaceful atmosphere inside the herd: the whales have no internal hierarchy, they do not show aggression towards each other, in case of danger, all members of the herd try to defend themselves with common efforts, there are even cases of mutual assistance to wounded brothers. In general, whales, with their huge size and clumsiness, give the impression of stupid and uninteresting animals. But this is a false idea! These peculiar animals are endowed with developed intelligence and are not inferior to dolphins in intelligence. For example, there are cases when whales showed interest in the underwater photographers who were filming them - the animals approached people and even tried to play with them in their own way, pushing them to the surface. Another example: whalers tracked down a female whale with her calf and killed the latter. The whale carcass was transported to the cutting site in tow. All this time, the female swam nearby and tried to remove the corpse of the cub from the rope. Captive whales in captivity quickly get used to people and are able to perform tricks (to the best of their physical capabilities). Like all highly developed animals, whales love to play, while they jump high out of the water and beat their tails loudly.

Minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata).

Whales feed on a variety of marine animals, and there is a narrow specialization in the nutrition of different species. Baleen whales eat exclusively plankton - the smallest sea crustaceans. They extract it by filtering large volumes of water. To do this, the whale opens its mouth and takes water into its mouth...

Humpback whales use their open mouths as a scoop.

then with his tongue, like a piston, he pushes the water out of his mouth - the water flows freely through the whalebone, but the crustaceans remain.

A whale strains water with plankton.

Toothed whales feed on fish, which they also catch not individually, but in whole schools. Sperm whales specialize in catching deep-sea fish and shellfish (mainly squid). Many whales make long dives for hunting; they can stay under water for up to 1.5 hours. The record holders for diving depth are sperm whales, which were encountered at a depth of 1 km!

Whales are very infertile animals. Females reach sexual maturity at 7-15 years, males only at 15-25. Moreover, each individual participates in reproduction no more than once every 2 years. In the mating ritual of whales there is not only no aggression, but also any kind of struggle at all. Male whales attract the attention of females with their songs! Whale voices are surprisingly delicate for animals of their size. Each species of whale has its own set of sounds, but even individuals of the same species differ in the tone of their voice. The whale's song resembles a melodic moan and sounds very loud. According to divers, when a whale sings, the water around it vibrates. Female whales can mate with several males, since there is no struggle between representatives of the stronger sex, selection occurs in a very unusual way. It turns out that the gonads of whales are enormous (in the sperm whale, for example, up to 10-20% of body weight) and are capable of producing large amounts of sperm. Thus, among several males mating with one female, the one whose hormonal status is higher wins. Pregnancy in various species lasts 11-18 months. The female gives birth to only one calf, but it is large and developed. For example, the weight of a newborn blue whale is 2-3 tons. The calf is born tail first and, with the help of its mother, rises to the surface for its first breath. The mother often feeds the cub with very rich milk, due to which it grows quickly. The lactation period of whales is relatively short - 5-7 months. During this time, the cub manages to grow 2 times, then its growth slows down sharply. For another 1.5-2 years, the cub accompanies the mother, using her protection. In small and medium-sized whales, young animals are kept in herds until they reach sexual maturity, and sometimes later. Whales live 50-70 years.

Baby blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus).

It would seem that nothing could threaten such gigantic animals in this world. In reality, whales are very vulnerable to various dangers. In the ocean, whales have no enemies except... their own brothers. Killer whales (giant predatory dolphins often called whales) attack other species of cetaceans. Killer whales live in groups and act collectively, so even adult whales can hardly resist their coordinated attack, and the calves are completely defenseless. When attacked, whales try to escape by “flight”, swimming away from the herd of killer whales at high speed. If it was not possible to break away from the pursuit, the whale tries to fight off the attackers with strong blows of its tail, the mother swims under the calf from below, trying to cover it with her body.

But even in the absence of predators, whales have enough problems. Sometimes these animals experience... hunger. Massive fishing, global warming, and changing sea currents undermine the food supply of whales and animals can drift for several weeks in “barren” waters. Researchers have encountered extremely emaciated animals. In the Arctic Ocean, whales often become trapped in ice. Since whales breathe air, they are forced to surface regularly to replenish their supplies. If there are no suitable polynyas around, whales break through the ice with their heads, but they do not always succeed. When the ice is thick (or the opening is small), entire herds of whales suffocate under the ice.

Minke whale in Antarctic ice.

To top it all off, whales are actively hunted by people. Despite their impressive size (or rather, because of them), whales are attractive prey for fishing. There are no useless parts in a whale carcass; everything is used: fat (blub), meat, baleen, teeth, skin. Sperm whales are suppliers of very exotic products - spermaceti and ambergris. Spermaceti, despite its name, is not whale sperm at all, but a fat-like substance from the brain. Ambergris is found in the intestines and has a pleasant smell, which is why it got its name. Both substances are very valuable raw materials in the cosmetics industry and are extremely highly valued on the world market.

As a result of the impact of unfavorable factors, the number of almost all species of whales has greatly decreased, many species are on the verge of extinction. In this regard, the World Convention on the Prohibition of Whale Fishing was adopted (especially since whaling products have lost their relevance in our time). The only country that has not signed the convention is Japan. Japanese whalers still carry out mass fishing of all whales indiscriminately, justifying themselves by the fact that whale meat... is a traditional component of Japanese cuisine. On the other hand, tourism in whale breeding grounds has gained wide popularity. Nature lovers visit such places on small boats; queues line up to tour operators for the opportunity to watch whales live and hear their songs. Attempts to keep whales in captivity run into many obstacles: large species of whales cannot be kept due to their size, baleen whales cannot be fed with plankton, and catching an adult whale without killing it is very difficult. Repeated attempts to catch the cubs led to the death of the babies even at the transportation stage. Only the smallest species of whales (beluga whales, pilot whales) take root in aquariums, but they do not breed there. Perhaps the only way to preserve these unique animals is a widespread ban on their hunting and comprehensive protection of water resources.

The carcass of a beached blue whale is being cut up for further scientific research.

Among bowhead whales there are individuals weighing up to 150 tons. Nature, perhaps, has not come up with anything heavier than these animals.

Whales are the largest creatures in the world. They are warm-blooded mammals and give birth to live young, which are fed milk. Although they surface to breathe, whales can stay underwater for up to an hour thanks to the large supply of oxygen in their blood, muscles and lungs.

Whale calves are born underwater, tail first. As soon as the head emerges, the mother pushes the baby toward the surface to take its first breath.

Blue whale calves weigh about 2 tons at birth. They drink 600 liters (158 gallons) of milk a day and can double their weight in a week. At seven months they weigh 23 tons - the same as African elephants.

The only representative of cetaceans that feeds on other warm-blooded animals is the large killer whale dolphin (or killer whale), reaching a length of 9 m. Schools of killer whales attack even large whales.

Killer whales sometimes attack baleen whales in search of food. But they only eat the whale's tongue, which can weigh as much as an elephant (The blue whale's tongue weighs up to 4 tons. Like a big elephant!). The rest of the killer whale's body is left to hungry animals that feed on carrion.

Whales make various sounds to communicate with each other. They growl and whistle, click and even sing complex songs.

Whales can hold their breath for up to two hours. Whales are able to notice a deviation of the Earth's magnetic field by one fifty-thousandth from normal. This ability is used by them for orientation in swimming. However, scientists do not yet know by what organ they perceive the magnetic field.

Most whale strandings occur where the Earth's magnetic field is weaker than normal. At such points of magnetic anomalies, whales, which usually swim along the directions of magnetic lines, may find themselves ashore before they realize anything. The fact is that, although the magnetic mole of the World Ocean is oriented from north to south along underwater mountain ranges, it does not always follow the coastline.

If a blue whale washes ashore, its calling calls will attract other whales of its species. They, in turn, can also wash ashore and attract even more whales with calls. Schools of huge sperm whales are often thrown out in this way.

Scientists can find out the age of toothed whales by counting the growth rings on a section of one of the teeth.

Whales are shaped like fish, but their tails move up and down rather than side to side. Sometimes they slap their huge tails on the water before surfacing. The sound of these claps can be heard several kilometers away.

One of the largest animals that has ever existed on Earth is, in all likelihood, a whale called the yellow-bellied minke whale, individuals of which reach a length of 33 m and have an average weight of 68-70 tons.

The blue whale is the largest animal that ever lived. It can reach 30 m (100 ft) in length, significantly longer than a dinosaur. In one rush, these whales can reach speeds of up to 30 km/h (10 mph). The fastest whales can swim twice as fast thanks to the power of their tails.

The largest animal in the world feeds on the smallest creatures. A blue whale can swallow up to 4 million shrimp in a day. Baleen whales, including the giant blue whale, feed on tiny shrimp called krill. A network of bony plates in the mouth strains food from the water. Toothed whales feed on fish, cephalopods and even seals. They grab the prey with their teeth and swallow it whole.

The humpback whale traps fish and feeds on them. He swims under the fish and blows a stream of bubbles through his nostrils. The fish become enveloped in these bubbles, and the whale surfaces to swallow the fish.

Every year, gray whales undertake long migratory journeys. They move from habitats in the Arctic to the coast of California (USA) to breed. By the time they return, their young are only two months old and have traveled about 20,000 km (13,000 miles).

The enormous sperm whale can dive to depths of 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) in search of giant cephalopods to eat. The tentacles of cephalopods leave huge marks on the sperm whale's head. (Some species of whales are capable of diving to depths of up to 600 m.)

The famous fountains that whales release when they surface are not water at all, but simply exhaust air mixed with water vapor.