Whales are the biggest mammals on the planet and are some of the most majestic creatures to witness in real life.
When seeing whales in person, they feel larger than life, and you wonder how anything can kill an animal that large.
Is their large size more a help or a hindrance to their survival?
Do Whales Die Of Old Age?
Yes, whales die of old age.
Whales live a lot longer than most mammals, but each species of whale lives for a different amount of time.
Some of them even have longer lifespans than humans.
Despite their mythical appearance, narwhals are real, very much so.
These small whales live for 40 to 60 years.
The adorable beluga whale lives for about the same amount of time.
Minke whales are the second smallest whale species.
They only live for 30 to 50 years, which is quite short for a whale’s lifespan.
The gray whale lives a fair bit longer, ranging from 50 to 70 years.
Sperm whales will live for about 60 to 80 years, while blue whales will live 70 to 90 years.
The fin whale lives for 60 to 100 years and humpback whales can live for 40 to 100 years.
The whale with the longest lifespan recorded is the bowhead whale.
They live for at least a century, but they can live for up to two centuries.
That is 100 to 200 years!
Whales can be difficult to research due to their location, habits, and size.
With predators lurking in the wild waters of the ocean and pollution killing even more whales, it can be difficult to have a whale die of old age.
Part of the reason it is difficult to keep whales safe enough for them to live out their maximum potential lifespan is that there isn’t a way to do it humanely.
Whales may be safest in the care of aquariums and zoos, but whales need a gigantic space to swim in.
The aquatic mammals are also quite intelligent.
When they are in small tanks, they can get bored and even depressed.
What Happens When Whales Die?
No matter how a whale dies, its body is difficult to remove from the ocean.
Their massive, seawater-soaked corpses take decades to break down.
While scavengers may help remove small parts of the body, whales are massive, and a whale’s body could take a whole ocean quite some time to eat.
When a whale dies, its insides are the first to decompose.
The decaying process causes gases to form in the body.
This makes the whale’s body expand and float.
After it reaches the surface of the water, the scavengers will come and take their own piece of the whale.
They may feed off of the same whale for as long as its body is afloat.
After the gases have been released, the whale will make its final descent.
A full-grown whale feeds all the levels of the ocean that it passes through.
It can feed micro-organisms that feed off of the decaying bacteria.
Whales can provide two years of nourishment.
It can act as a sudden boost in food supply for the creatures that live on the seafloor and deep sea.
Tiny creatures such as shrimp and sea snails will eat any remaining muscle or fat.
They will pick the bones clean.
Zombie worms will eventually come and eat holes in the bones of the whale and will be the ones to finish cleaning up the whale bones.
Zombie worms, also known as bone worms, will use the chemicals they naturally produce to eat away at the collagen and to oxygenize the bone.
Male zombie worms live inside female zombie worms, which allows them to reproduce quickly in order to break down large amounts of bone.
Not every whale that dies sinks to the ocean.
A large number of whale bodies will get stranded across all coastlines.
What Mammal Lives The Longest?
According to the Nation Ocean Service, the bowhead whale is the longest living mammal on the planet.
These massive, arctic whales will live anywhere from 100 to 200 years.
The only sea creature that lives longer than the bowhead whale is the North Atlantic clam, which lives up to 500 years.
Bowhead whales can grow to be up to 65 feet long and can weigh 70 to 100 tons.
These whales are so large that they have two blowholes.
These massive bodies of theirs take two tons of food daily in order to have enough energy to keep swimming through the ocean.
These massive whales use baleen plates, which are brush-like teeth, which filter out everything but the zooplankton and krill that bowhead whales like to eat.
Bowhead whales love to leap from the water and splash.
They’re able to get their entire bodies out of the water.
Bowhead whales are well adjusted to their arctic environment.
Their 1.6-foot-thick layer of blubber keeps them safe while they are swimming beneath the sea ice, where they spend a majority of their time.
Bowhead whales have massive heads.
Their name comes from the way that their mouths bow, creating a happy-looking face.
Their heads can be 25 feet in length and are capable of breaking through seven inches of solid ice without a problem.
During the winter months, the Arctic becomes vastly darker.
When swimming underneath the arctic ice, it becomes even darker.
Bowhead whales have more than 60 different vocalizations that they use to communicate.
Sadly, bowhead whales are an endangered species.
There are only about 10,000 bowhead whales left in the wild.
The modern-day threats to bowhead whales are pollution and the melting of the polar ice caps.
The Smallest Whale
The smallest species of whale is the dwarf sperm whale, which is smaller than a dolphin.
These whales are only about nine feet long.
They live in the Mid-Atlantic, the Pacific Islands, the Southeast, and the West Coast.
Dwarf sperm whales are very similar to pygmy whales.
The two species are often mistaken for each other.
Dwarf sperm whales are extremely shy and elusive, so there are still mysteries that marine biologists have yet to solve about them, such as how many dwarf sperm whales are still alive in the wild today.
Dwarf sperm whales have small, square heads with bodies to match.
The most noticeable difference between a pygmy whale and a Dwarf sperm whale is the dwarf sperm whale’s flatter back.
Pygmy whales have more of an arched back.
Similar to pygmy whales, a dwarf sperm whale will squirt a brown intestinal liquid to distract predators.
These extremely skittish creatures are very intentional with their movements.
They slowly rise to the surface and gently descend until they are out of sight. Then, they will drop down into the ocean.
These small whales love to eat deep-sea creatures such as squid, octopus, fish, and crustaceans.
Similar to bats, they use echolocation to find their prey.
They tend to live in groups of six to 10 whales, which can be called pods, herds, or schools.
The biggest threats that dwarf sperm whales have in the water are sharks, poachers, plastic pollutants, getting entangled in fishing nets, getting run into by ships, the overhunting of their prey, and global warming for altering what is available in their habitat.
How Fast Can Whales Swim?
Different species of whales are capable of swimming at different speeds, but on average, a whale casually swims about 15 miles per hour and can dash away up to about 30 miles per hour.
Some whales can swim even faster.
Orca whales are the fastest of the whales.
They may only cruise at about three to four miles.
When hunting, the orca whale can go about 35 miles per hour, which is as fast as a great white shark.
The orca is capable of going at top speeds for much longer than the great white shark is capable of.
What Kind Of Whale Was Moby Dick?
Moby Dick was a sperm whale who was inspired by whales that made headlines while the author of the book, Herman Melville, was alive.
The real whale’s name was Mocha Dick.
This white sperm whale was able to destroy 20 ships that sailed around Chile and escaped 80 whaling boats.
Mocha Dick terrorized the Chilean seas for 28 years before he was finally defeated.
Sperm whales are typically black or gray with a long, rectangular head that takes up about a third of the whale’s body.
They can be 55 to 65 feet long and weigh anywhere from 88,000 pounds to 120,000 pounds.
You can spot sperm whales in the subarctic, subantarctic, and Atlantic waters.
They mostly eat squid, rays, octopi, and even megamouth sharks.
Sperm whales love to dive for giant squid, going as deep as 4,000 feet below sea level.
Sperm whales have a special organ that allows them to float motionless in the water.
This is called the spermaceti organ.
The spermaceti organ holds about 530 gallons of high-quality whale oil called spermaceti.
The oil keeps the whales afloat even when they aren’t moving.
When the oil is cold, it becomes as dense as wax.
By allowing water in their blowhole and nasal passage, sperm whales can warm the spermaceti back to an oily consistency that allows them to become more buoyant.
Spermaceti is used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and watch lubricants.
The reason that spermaceti is the best kind of whale oil is because of how long it takes to spoil.
Scientists are currently hoping to humanely attach a camera to the head of a sperm whale to test out their theories about the spermaceti organ.
The spermaceti organ is more than a floatation device.
It is also used as an echolocation device.
What Is The Biggest Whale?
The biggest whale is the blue whale, which also happens to be the biggest creature on the planet.
Blue whales can grow to be almost 100 feet in length and can weigh up to 400,000 pounds.
These whales are also the loudest animals in the world.
Their calls can reach 188 decibels, which is louder than a jet taking off.
Blue whales may be massive, but their diet is composed of mostly tiny krill.
Blue whales eat nearly 9,000 pounds per day.
In the summer months, a blue whale will eat about 40 million krill a day.
Luckily, krill reproduce quickly.
To match the blue whale’s massive size, it also has a massive heart.
The average blue whale’s heart weighs 400 pounds and is about the size of a Smart Car.
This giant heart works slowly, only beating twice per minute when diving.
In the biblical story, Jonah and the Whale, the Bible talks about a sulfur-bellied whale.
The Bible is referring to the secondary name of the blue whale.
While most whales have white bellies, the blue whale has a yellow belly.
Although blue whales were once abundant, they are now critically endangered.
In 2018, only 3,000 blue whales were remaining in the wild.
When whaling and whale oil were more popular, 29,000 blue whales were captured and killed in a single season.
Between 1904 to 1967, an estimated 350,000 blue whales were killed in the southern hemisphere.
Despite being banned in the 1960s by the International Whaling Commission, whale poaching was still popular until 1972.
Since then, conservationists have kept a close eye on blue whale’s favorite places to hunt krill.
Do Whales Sleep?
Yes, whales need sleep in order to survive, much like the vast majority of creatures on the planet.
Whales sleep vastly differently from most mammals because they aren’t unconscious breathers, like humans.
They are conscious breathers, which means they have to choose to breathe.
Whales have three main sleeping positions.
The most common position is to just take a nap in whatever position they were in last.
Whales may also sleep next to a pod member while slowly swimming along.
The last position is called logging, where the whales will sleep floating vertically up to the surface.
When whales sleep, they don’t completely lose consciousness.
They keep half of their brain functioning in order to stay aware of predators and to remember to breathe.
There are two reasons whales are able to hold their breath for as long as they do.
Whales and other marine mammals have a much higher tolerance to carbon dioxide, which is what mammals produce when they take in oxygen.
Whales are also able to use their blowholes similarly to a wine cork.
One species of whale sleeps more deeply than most other whales, and it is the sperm whale.
Sperm whales may sleep harder than other whales, but they don’t sleep nearly as long.
Although some species of whales will spend a third of their day sleeping, sperm whales only sleep for 7% of the day.
Marine mammals will rarely drown.
Most instances of marine mammals drowning are caused by fishing nets blocking their way to the surface.
Another cause for marine mammals like whales to drown is if they don’t reach the water’s surface for their first breath after being born.
Whales Are Wonderful
Whales are large, majestic sea creatures that are beloved by many people.
People love whales so much that they will go on cruises and other boat rides in order to see them in their full glory.
There is nothing more awe-inspiring than watching a giant whale breach the water’s surface and leap from the sea.
There are many different species of whales that are endangered due to mass fishing and water pollution.
The planet is in danger of losing beautiful species of whales such as the fin whale, the sperm whale, the bowhead whale, and the blue whale.
Whales have given us resources, such as whale oil, which help the world get to where it is today.
In return, it is time to offer the whale population some support until they have returned to higher population levels.
The whale population needs the time to heal before we can begin harvesting them for oils, meat, and blubber.
Whales are massive creatures that have the ability to live long, free lives.
While the natural death of a whale is beneficial for its local ecosystem, the illegal and unnecessary slaughter of endangered animals isn’t beneficial.
By removing whales from their local ecosystems, the krill population will become unmanageable and throw the entire ocean off balance.
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