Keith Rathgaber, Age 13, Of Victoria, B.C., Canada, for his question:
How many young does the whale produce?
A pair of pesky flies can produce half a billion descendants during a summer season. A magnificent whale, giant of the deep oceans, produces only one offspring in two years, and it takes the youngster 12 to 14 years to grow to his full size.
The baleen whales and the toothed whales, the grampuses and the narwhals, the dolphins and the porpoises all belong in the animal order cetacea. They are descended from ancestors that left the ancient seas ages ago arid learned to cope with life on the dry land. They were warm blooded, air breathing mammals with legs for walking over the ground and perhaps fitted with coats of hair or warm fur.
Later, much later, these bold adventurers returned to the seas, perhaps in search of food. They never returned to the land, and in time their legs became flukes and fishy flippers, far more useful for swimming through the watery oceans. But the cetaceans remained mammals. Their air breathing young were born alive and fed on mother's milk. The mother cetacean may sound or plunge a mile or more under the water, but her baby must be born where he can get his first breath of air at the surface of the sea.
The young cetacean is almost always an only child. The blur baleen whale arid the monster toothed whales bear one infant every other year. The various dolphins and porpoises also bear only one infant. The narwhal of the polar seas sometimes bears two offspring at a time. Almost all of the cetacean mothers must wait at least two years before producing another infant.
In most cases it takes about a year for the baby whale to develop within the body of his giant mother. The new born b1ue whale is 25 feet long and may tip the scales at four tons. He can swim as soon as he is born, but for six months he must depend upon his whopping mother for his food. Then he is gently weaned and learns to feed on scraps of floating seafood. After two years he is old enough to leave his mother and share a lazy, ocean going life with other youngsters. He will be fully grown in about 12 years, and if he is lucky the blue whale may live long enough to celebrate 50 birthdays or more.
Other baleen and toothed whales follow much the same pattern as the b1ue whale. However, the baby blue whale is the biggest of them all. Its parents, after all, are the biggest animals that ever lived upon the earth.
Whales are slow to multiply, and mankind has hunted them without mercy throughout the oceans of the world. The numbers of almost all the whales have been reduced, end the biggest of them are in danger of becoming extinct. People who care about animals would like to see stricter laws passed to protect both the baleen and the toothed whales.