Facts About Whales for Kids

There are a lot of fun facts about whales for kids.

* Whales are warm-blooded mammals that breathe with lungs and give live birth.

* While most mammals have fur or hair to keep them warm, whales and dolphins don't.

* Instead they have blubber, a layer of fat under their skin, which keeps them warm in the water. In some larger whales, that layer can be 0.5m thick.

* Whales (including dolphins) are carnivores. Even the large baleen whales that don't have teeth, eat small animals like krill.
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* Toothed whales, (including dolphins), eat larger animals such as fish and squid.

* All baleen whales live in salt water, but a few species of toothed whales live in freshwater rivers.

* Basilosaurus was a 20-meters-long ancestor of whales that lived in dinosaur ages. 

*The Bowhead whale has the largest mouth in the world. Its mouth makes up 1/3 of its 18-meters-long body.

*  While blue whale is the largest whale in the world, one of the smallest whales is finless porpoise which is only 1.5 metres long.

* Whales, (including dolphins), have large brains compared to most other animals.

More Facts About Whales for Kids

* Fin whales can make a noise so loud that it has been mistaken for the humming of a ship.

* Whales are believed to have a sense of the Earth's magnetic field. It is believed that it helps them navigate and could sometimes be a cause behind whale and dolphin strandings.

* The blows of different species of whales are different and can be used for identification.

* Baleen whales have long baleens hanging down from their upper jaws. 

* The Bowhead whale has the longest baleen of all whale species - it's more than four meters long.

* Whales communicate to each other by many different means. They make noises, and use their bodies, e.g. lobtailing (slapping the water surface with their tail flukes).

* Baleen whales usually swim in large groups as they migrate long distances. They migrate between cold feeding grounds and warm breeding grounds.

* The Fin whale is one of the fastest. It swims 20km/h. It is also the second largest whale after blue whale.

*  About 1000 whales and dolphins die every day in fishing nets. They get accidentally stuck and they drown because they cannot get to the surface to breathe.

* Drowning is the biggest danger for whales, even though they live their entire life in the water, they need to get the oxygen from the air.

* If a whale is sick or injured and cannot get to the surface, other pod members will support it (lift it up to the surface).

* A sick whale often wants to swim to shallower waters to make sure it can breath.

* The pod members will follow because they want to help, and they don't want it to get separated from the pod.

* If they swim in water that is too shallow, or in tidal waters, the whole pod can get stranded.

* One problem for stranded whales is that their skin will get too dry and burn in the sun. They need to be kept moist with wet cloths, or by sprinkling water from hoses, until the next high tide comes along and they can get back into the water.

* If the largest whales get stranded, they can die because their inner organs get crushed under their own body weight, which can only be supported in the water.

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