CHAPTER XIII

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.

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.