THE WHALE TRIBE
The whales are more thoroughly creatures of the water than even the
seals, for they never come upon dry land at all, even during the
breeding-season. Indeed, if a whale is unfortunate enough to be thrown
upon the shore by a great wave, and left stranded, it cannot possibly
make its way back into the sea, but is obliged to lie there till it
dies.
Yet we must not think that these giant creatures are fishes; for they
are as truly mammals as the seals are. Their blood is hot, and is driven
through the body by a heart made up of four chambers, instead of only
two. They breathe by means of nostrils and lungs, and not by means of
gills. And besides that they suckle their young, just as all other
mammals do.
Then, once more, if you look at the body of a whale, you will see that
its tail is quite different from that of a fish. The tail of a fish is
upright, but that of a whale is set crosswise. So that there is only one
respect in which whales are really like fishes, and that is the general
shape of the body.
These huge animals fall naturally into two families, the first
consisting of those which have teeth, and the other of those which have
whalebone, or baleen, instead. But in many ways the members of both
these families are alike.
HOW WHALES BREATHE
All whales, for example, breathe in a very curious way. No doubt you
have heard of the "spouting" of these animals, and perhaps you may have
seen a picture of a whale lying on the surface of the sea, and throwing
up a great column of water from its nostrils, or blow-holes. These
pictures, however, are rather exaggerated, for what really happens is
this: A whale, as of course you know, often remains under water for a
very long time, and when at last it rises to the surface, the air in its
lungs is heavily laden with moisture. When the air is discharged through
the blow-holes into the cold atmosphere the moisture condenses at once
into a kind of misty spray, just as that in our own breath does in very
cold weather. This is what one sees when a whale is spouting, although
as the animal sometimes begins to blow while its nostrils are still
beneath the surface, a small quantity of sea-water may, perhaps, be
thrown up too.
A whale, if it is not disturbed, will often blow fifty or sixty times in
succession. Let us try to explain why it does so.
If _you_ try to hold your breath, you will find that it is very
difficult to do so for more than three-quarters of a minute. But if,
before you make the attempt, you get rid of as much of the air in your
lungs as you possibly can, draw in a very deep breath and get rid of
that, and then repeat the process about half a dozen times, you will
find that you can hold your breath quite easily for at least a minute
and a half. The reason is that by breathing so often and so deeply you
have purified all the blood in your body, instead of having, as usual, a
very large quantity which has done its work, and requires to be
refreshed in the lungs before it can be of any further use.
Now the whale spouts fifty or sixty times in succession for just the
same reason. It is taking a series of deep breaths so that it may purify
all the blood in its body, and be able to remain under water for as long
a time as possible without having to rise to the surface for air. And,
besides this, there is a most wonderful arrangement in its body which
enables it to stay below for very much longer than would otherwise be
possible. Inside its chest it has a sort of blood-cistern, so to speak,
consisting of a number of large vessels, which contain a great quantity
of extra blood, besides that which is circulating through the body. This
blood, also, is purified when the whale spouts. Then, when the animal
has remained under water for some little time, and begins to feel the
want of air, it does not rise to the surface at once, in order to
breathe, but just pumps some of the extra blood from this curious
cistern into its veins and arteries, to take the place of that which is
used up and requires to be purified. This it can do over and over
again until all the extra blood-supply is used up too, when it is
obliged to rise and spout.
As a general rule a whale spends from ten to twelve minutes in spouting,
and can then remain under water, if necessary, for considerably more
than an hour.
It is owing to this singular method of breathing that whales can be so
easily killed. The object of the hunters is simply to drive them below
before they have finished spouting. They do this again and again, and
the consequence is that the poor animal soon becomes completely
exhausted and falls an easy prey.
THE WHALE'S BLUBBER
You remember, don't you, how the seals are protected from cold, partly
by their thick and oily fur, and partly by the layer of fat which lies
just under the skin? Well, the whales are protected in much the same
way. They have no fur, of course; but the layer of fat, which we call
blubber, is always several inches in thickness, and is sometimes as much
as two feet; so that the whale is never chilled by living in the water,
even when it has to make its way through floating ice.
This blubber has another use as well. When the whale dives to a great
depth--and sometimes it sinks half a mile or more beneath the surface of
the sea--the pressure on its body becomes enormously great because of
the weight of the water above it. If you were to dive to half that depth
you would die. But the blubber of the whale is so elastic that it
resists the pressure just as a great thick sheet of india-rubber would,
so that the animal does not suffer from it in the least.
MISTAKES OF ARTISTS
Sometimes you see pictures in which whales are drawn with very big eyes,
very long ears, and perhaps even with their tongues hanging out of their
mouths. Now such pictures are drawn by artists who know nothing about
whales, for the eyes of these animals are quite small, their outward
ears are merely little holes in the skin, closing by means of
self-acting valves like those of the seals, and the tongue cannot
be poked out of the mouth at all.
Now let us learn something about the different kinds of whales.
TOOTHED WHALES
First come the toothed whales, or denticetes. As an example of these we
will take the famous sperm or spermaceti whale, which is also known as
the cachalot.
This whale has nearly all its teeth in the lower jaw, the upper one only
having a very short row of small teeth on either side. The lower teeth
are five or six inches long, and fit into pits in the upper jaw when the
mouth is closed. These teeth are composed of beautiful ivory, and were
formerly valued so highly by the natives of the South Sea Islands, that
more than once a tribe has actually gone to war with another tribe
simply to obtain possession of a single whale's tooth.
Now that it has been hunted so much, apparently the sperm-whale does not
grow to so great a size as it did in days gone by. Yet it is a very big
animal, for a full-grown male will attain to a length of sixty or even
seventy feet, while even a baby whale is from eleven to fourteen feet
long, or as big as a big walrus. And, strange to say, the head is almost
as large as the body and tail put together. This is chiefly due to the
fact that there is a great cavity in the skull, which contains the
valuable substance we call spermaceti. When one of these whales is
killed, the head is cut off, and a kind of well is dug in the forehead,
from which the spermaceti is drawn to the surface in buckets, as much as
thirty barrels being sometimes taken from a single animal.
Besides this, the blubber yields a large quantity of very valuable oil,
which burns with a much clearer and stronger light than ordinary
whale-oil. And sometimes a curious substance called ambergris is found
in its body. It is used in making certain kinds of scent, and is quite
costly, although as much as fifty pounds of it have sometimes been taken
from a single whale.
Sperm-whales are generally seen in companies, which are known as
schools. In olden days there were sometimes as many as two hundred
whales in one of these schools. But so many of the great creatures have
been killed by whalers that it is now quite the exception to see more
than four or five together.
These whales are very playful creatures, and may often be seen gamboling
on the surface of the sea, and now and then breaching, or leaping
completely out of the water and falling back again with a tremendous
splash. They feed chiefly upon the great cuttles, or squids, which are
so plentiful in some parts of the ocean, but also devour large numbers
of cod and other fishes. But how they manage to catch these fishes
nobody quite seems to know.
These whales were formerly hunted by means of a small boat, in the bow
of which stood a man with a long spear, or harpoon, in his hand,
attached to an enormous coil of rope. As soon as this was hurled at a
whale the boat was backed, so as to escape the stroke of its tail, and
the whale would then sound, or dive to the depth of perhaps
three-quarters of a mile. As soon as he rose he was driven down again,
as already described, before he had had time to finish spouting, and at
last, when quite exhausted, was killed by means of a very long and
sharp-edged lance. Nowadays, however, the harpoon is generally fired
from a ship by means of a gun, and as a charge of gun-cotton is placed
in the harpoon's head, which explodes as soon as the weapon enters the
body of the whale, such a severe wound is caused that the animal very
soon dies.
BOTTLE-NOSED WHALES
These whales are so called because their muzzles are produced into beaks
shaped somewhat like bottles. Although they belong to the toothed whales
they only have two teeth in the lower jaw, and even these are so small
that they are completely buried in the gum.
By the side of the cachalot the bottle-nosed whale seems quite a small
animal, for even the full-grown male seldom exceeds thirty feet in
length, while the female is quite six feet shorter. It yields, on an
average, about two hundredweight of spermaceti and two tons of oil. Its
color, strange to say, is continually changing all through its life, for
the young animals are black above and the older ones brown, which grows
lighter and lighter as time goes on, till at last it becomes almost
yellow.
These whales seem to be very sympathetic creatures, for if one of them
is wounded, its companions generally swim round and round it, and will
even allow themselves to be killed one after the other rather than take
to flight. But they are also rather stupid animals, for if they happen
to find themselves near the coast they seldom seem to realize that they
can easily escape by turning round and swimming out to sea, but leap and
tumble about in a state of great terror till at last a big wave comes
and throws them up on the beach.
WHALEBONE-WHALES
The members of the other great group of these animals are called
whalebone-whales, because they have whalebone in their mouths instead of
teeth.
Of course this substance is not really bone at all. It consists of a
kind of horny material which grows all round the upper jaw in a series
of flattened plates, which are usually very long, and hang downward from
the edge of the palate. Each of these plates, at the tip, is broken up
into a sort of hair-like fringe; so that when the jaws are partly closed
there is a kind of sieve, or strainer, between them, through which
everything must pass that goes in or out of the mouth.
This sieve is used in feeding. It seems strange that an animal so huge
as a whale should feed on some of the smallest creatures which live in
the sea. Yet such is the case, for the throats of the whalebone-whales
are so narrow that one of them would almost certainly be choked if it
tried to swallow a herring. So these whales live upon very small jelly
fishes, and the young of shrimps, prawns, tiny crabs, etc., which often
swim about in such vast shoals that for miles and miles the sea is quite
alive with them. When the whale meets with one of these shoals it opens
its mouth wide and swims through it. Then it partly closes its mouth,
and squirts out the water which it has taken in through the whalebone
strainer, the little animals, of course, remaining behind. These are
then swallowed, a few thousand at a gulp, and the whale opens its mouth
and repeats the operation over and over again, until its enormous
appetite is satisfied.
Most of the whalebone which we use is obtained from the bowhead, or
Greenland whale, which is found in the northern seas. This animal is
from forty to sixty feet long when fully grown, and the baleen plates
are often ten or even twelve feet in length, while there are nearly four
hundred of them on each side of the upper jaw. In a large whale these
plates weigh more than a ton, and are worth at least $15,000. Then from
130 to 150 barrels of oil will be obtained from its blubber; so that a
big Greenland whale is a very valuable animal.
But whales of this size are now very rarely met with, and there seems to
be some danger that before many years have passed away these giant
creatures will be almost extinct.
RORQUALS
The rorquals are sometimes known as fin-whales, or finbacks, because
they have an upright fin on the hinder part of the back. They are not so
valuable as the Greenland whale, because their baleen is of inferior
quality, and is very much shorter, while their blubber does not yield
nearly so much oil, and they can swim with such speed that they are very
much harder to catch.
The common rorqual grows to a length of about sixty or sixty-five feet,
and is found throughout all the northern seas, and occasionally even in
the Mediterranean. It is a solitary animal as a rule, but schools of
from ten to fifteen individuals are sometimes met with, and may be seen
leaping into the air, and rolling and tumbling about in the water, as
though they were having a game of play together.
The rorqual feeds partly upon the small creatures which it captures by
means of its whalebone strainer, and partly upon fishes. How vast its
appetite is you can judge from the fact that as many as six hundred
large codfish have been found in the stomach of one of these animals,
together with a number of pilchards. Sometimes a rorqual will come quite
near the coast, and remain in a fishing-ground for weeks together, and
as it swallows several boatloads of fish every day, it is scarcely
necessary to say that the fishermen are not at all pleased to see it.
There is another kind of whale, called the lesser rorqual, which only
grows to the length of about twenty-five or thirty feet. It is common
off the shores of Norway, and commoner still in North American waters,
where it is known as the sharp-nosed finner. It is a very playful
animal, and is said sometimes to gambol round and round a ship for
miles, now and then diving underneath it on one side and coming up on
the other.
[Illustration: TYPES OF BEARS.
1. Polar or Ice Bear. 2. American Black Bear.
3. Brown Bear: Grizzly Bear. 4. A Marine Bear (California Seals).]
THE DOLPHIN FAMILY
Next we come to the dolphin family, which includes the narwhal, the
grampuses, and the porpoises, as well as the true dolphins.
THE NARWHAL
This is a curious animal, for the male has a very long straight tusk
projecting from one side of its upper jaw. This tusk is often as much as
seven or eight feet in length, and the ivory of which it is made is
twisted round and round in a spiral from base to tip. In former days
this tusk was thought to be the horn of the unicorn, and the narwhal is
often known as the sea-unicorn.
In reality, this tusk is the left-hand upper "eye" tooth of the animal,
that on the right-hand side being very small and completely buried in
the bone of the jaw. Now and then, however, both teeth are developed,
and a narwhal was once killed which had one tusk seven feet five inches
long and the other seven feet. There are no other teeth in the mouth,
and the female animal has no tusks at all.
Now what is the use of this singular weapon? Two or three answers have
been given to this question. Some people have supposed, for example,
that it is used in spearing fish, or in digging up buried mollusks from
the mud at the bottom of the sea. But the female narwhals require food
just as much as the males do; how is it that they are not provided with
tusks also?
Other people have thought that when the winter is very severe, and the
ice on the surface of the sea is very thick, the animal could bore a
hole through it with its tusk, and so be able to breathe. But then
again, female narwhals require air just as they require food. So this
suggestion will not do either.
The only explanation we can really give is that the narwhal's tusk is a
weapon used in fighting, just like the antlers of the male deer. At any
rate, narwhals have several times been seen as they were taking part in
a kind of make-believe battle, and striking and clashing their tusks
together just as though they were fencing with swords. And when they are
fighting in earnest they must be able to use their long spears with
terrible effect, for several times a narwhal has charged a ship, and
driven its tusk so deeply into her timbers that it was quite unable to
withdraw it.
The ivory of which this weapon is made is of very fine quality. But as
the tusk is hollow for the greater part of its length it is not very
valuable.
Narwhals are only found in the half-frozen seas of the far north, where
they are sometimes seen swimming side by side together in large
companies. They grow to a length of twelve feet or over, and are dark
gray in color on the upper part of the body, and white underneath, the
back and sides being more or less mottled with gray.
THE WHITE WHALE
The white whale, or beluga, is something like a large narwhal without a
tusk, and is also a dweller in the northern seas. But it often ascends
the larger rivers for hundreds of miles in search of fish. Now and then
it has been killed off the coasts of Scotland, and one example lived for
quite a long time in the Firth of Forth, going up the river day after
day as the tide came in, and always retreating as it began to fall. The
fishermen were very anxious to kill it, because of the quantities of
fish which it devoured. But it was so quick and active that it eluded
them over and over again, and three whole months passed away before at
last they succeeded.
In one or two of the great rivers of North America white whales are
regularly hunted, the animals being first driven up the stream, and then
caught with nets as they return. They yield a large quantity of very
pure oil, and the "porpoise-hide," which is used so largely in making
boots and shoes, is in reality prepared from their skins.
THE TRUE PORPOISE
The true porpoise, or sea-hog, is much more widely distributed. It likes
to tumble and gambol on the surface of the sea quite close to the shore.
It will ascend tidal rivers too. Its range is mainly along the Atlantic
coast, and it is also found on coasts of Europe and in the Pacific
Ocean. Chasing porpoises in canoes, and spearing them, is an exciting
Canadian sport.
Porpoises have a curious way of swimming, for they travel along by a
series of bounds, first of all leaping almost out of the water, and then
diving under it. When a number of them are moving along in this way one
behind the other, as they very often do, they look from a little
distance just like an enormous snake winding its way through the water,
and no doubt have given rise to some of the tales about the great
sea-serpent.
A herd of porpoises will frequently follow a sailing ship for days,
sometimes, apparently, out of pure curiosity, and sometimes in the hope
of picking up something eatable among the rubbish that is thrown
overboard. But they are very much afraid of steamships, and always keep
at a respectful distance from them. They feed chiefly on fish, and are
so quick and active that even the salmon cannot escape from them, while
they will follow up shoals of mackerel and herrings and destroy them in
enormous numbers.
When fully grown the porpoise is rather more than five feet long. The
upper part of the body is almost black in color, becoming paler on the
sides, while the lower surface is almost pure white.
THE GRAMPUS
The largest and fiercest of all the members of the dolphin family is
undoubtedly the grampus, which is also known as the killer, or
killer-whale. It often reaches a length of twenty feet, or even more,
and is so savage and voracious that it has sometimes been called the
wolf of the sea. One of these animals was once found floating on the
surface of the sea, choked by a seal which it had attempted to swallow;
and when its body was opened fourteen other seals and thirteen porpoises
were taken from its stomach.
Three or four killers will often combine in an attack upon a large
whale, leaping upon it again and again, and striking terrific blows upon
its body with their tails, hanging upon its lips like so many bulldogs,
biting and tearing its flesh, and often actually killing it. The whale
seems terrified by the onslaught of the ferocious creatures, and
sometimes scarcely attempts to resist them, apparently knowing quite
well that they are sure to be victorious in the end.
The grampus is most plentiful in the northern seas, but is found now and
then in almost all parts of the ocean. It occasionally visits the
British shores. Once a living specimen was exhibited in the Brighton
Aquarium, and did very well for some little time. But one day it got its
snout jammed in the rock-work at the bottom of its tank, so that it
could not rise to the surface to spout. And when the keeper discovered
what had happened to it the poor creature was dead.
THE BLACKFISH
Almost as large as the grampus, but not nearly so savage, is the
blackfish, which is so called on account of its color, for it is not a
fish, being a member of the dolphin family. It is found in great shoals,
generally consisting of two or three hundred animals, and often of a
great many more, which are always under the guidance of a single leader.
Wherever he goes they will always follow, and they are such stupid
creatures that if he swims into shallow water and casts himself ashore,
they will all swim after him and fling themselves on the beach also. In
Iceland, and also in the Faroe Islands, large numbers of them are often
killed, the fishermen arranging their boats in a semicircle between the
shoal and the deep sea, and then driving them forward till they strand
themselves upon the shore in their efforts to escape. Large herds have
also been driven ashore in the Orkneys and the Shetlands.
On the east coast of North America the blackfish is one of the most
abundant cetaceans. Off Cape Cod more than a hundred blackfish have been
seen in one school, and they are eagerly hunted for the sake of the soft
oil yielded by their fat.
DOLPHINS
There are two groups of dolphins, the first of which contains three
animals that live in rivers, and therefore are generally called
fresh-water dolphins.
The only one of these that we can mention is the Gangetic dolphin, which
inhabits the great rivers of India, and is named from the Ganges. Its
chief peculiarity is that it is almost totally blind. Although the
animal grows to a length of seven or eight feet, and is bulky in
proportion, yet its eyeballs are no larger than peas, while the nerves
of sight are so imperfect that it is quite possible that it may not be
able to see at all. This is no deprivation to it however, for the rivers
in which it lives are always so thick with mud that even if it had
properly developed eyes it would be quite unable to use them.
The Gangetic dolphin is very seldom seen, because when it comes up to
breathe it only raises just the blow-holes above the surface of the
water. For the same reason, we know very little indeed about its habits.
But it seems to feed on fresh-water shrimps and mollusks, and also on
certain fishes which lie half-buried in the mud at the bottom of the
water, rooting about for them with its snout after the manner of a pig.
This animal is often known as the susu.
SEA-DOLPHINS
Of the sea-dolphins we can only notice two. The first of these is the
common dolphin, which is found in great numbers in almost all parts of
the temperate and tropical seas. Apparently it is not often to be found
on American coasts, but it has been captured in eastern harbors. It
generally lives in herds, which will follow ships for hours together,
leaping and gamboling on the surface of the sea, and yet keeping pace
with the vessel without the least apparent effort. It feeds on fishes,
to capture which, and hold them firmly, it has one hundred and ninety
teeth, so arranged that when the mouth is closed the upper and lower
ones fit in between one another like those of a steel trap and hold the
prey in a grip from which there is no escape.
A full-grown dolphin is usually about seven feet long, but much larger
specimens are occasionally found. The color is dark gray or glossy black
above, and almost pure white on the lower parts of the body.
The bottle-nosed dolphin is a rather smaller animal, with a shorter and
more pointed beak shaped rather like the neck of a bottle, and is purple
black above and grayish white below. Its range is on the North Atlantic
coast from Maine to Florida, on the Gulf coast, and also on some of the
coasts of Europe.
MANATEES AND DUGONGS
There is just one other family of water-mammals which it will be
convenient to mention here, although they do not really belong to the
whale tribe. These are the very curious creatures known as sirenians,
the best known of them being the manatee and the dugong.
Of course you have heard of mermaids, those imaginary creatures of the
sea, which were supposed in days of old to combine the head and body of
a woman with the tail of a fish. Well, very likely stories of them were
told in the first place by some traveler who had seen a manatee, for the
animal has a queer way of raising its head and the upper part of its
body almost upright out of the water and cuddling its little one in its
flippers, so that from a little distance it really looks something like
a human being with a child. But at close quarters the comparison would
not be a very flattering one, for there is a kind of disk-like swelling
at the end of the snout, and the skin is black and coarse and wrinkled
like that of an elephant.
Manatees are found on the west coast of Africa, and also on the shores
of South America, living near the mouths of the larger rivers. They
never seem to leave the water of their own accord, and if by any chance
they find themselves upon dry land, they are perfectly helpless, and can
only roll over and over. One specimen seen in a zoo was quite a small
animal, and had to be fed with milk out of a baby's bottle, while the
keeper nursed it upon his knees. When it grew a little bigger it became
very playful, and would tumble and roll about in its tank almost like a
dolphin or a porpoise. And more than once it even succeeded in knocking
its keeper into the water.
Another of these animals, caught at the mouth of the Essequibo River,
lived in an aquarium for sixteen months. It was about eight feet long,
and its tail was so powerful that every one was afraid the sides of its
tank would be broken in by its tremendous blows. Its appetite was
remarkably good, for it used to eat as much as eighty-four pounds of
lettuces every day.
There is a species of manatee, also called sea-cow, formerly ranging the
South Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, but now seen only
in the rivers and lagoons of southeastern Florida, where it has become
so rare that the State prohibits its wanton destruction under penalty of
a heavy fine.
The dugong is found on the east coast of Africa, and also on the coasts
of Mauritius, Ceylon, the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and Western
Australia. In many respects it is very much like the manatee. But it has
a forked tail instead of a rounded one, and its body is bluish black
above and whitish below. It lives in shallow water near the mouths of
rivers, feeds on various water-plants, and is said to be so affectionate
that if one of a pair is killed the other cannot be induced to leave the
dead body, but will remain by it and allow itself to be slaughtered
also.
Not very many years ago dugongs were found in large herds, sometimes
consisting of two or three hundred individuals, and were so tame that
they would even permit themselves to be touched without attempting to
escape. But they have been killed in great numbers for the sake of their
hides and a valuable oil which is extracted from their bodies, so that
nowadays it seldom happens that more than two or three are seen
together.
A full-grown dugong is generally from seven to eight feet long, and
measures about six feet round the body. The Australian dugong is said to
attain a length of fourteen feet.