Bobby Christians age 12, of Cottage Groves Ore., for his question

How does a porpoise breathe?     

The playful porpoise is a charmer and one of the smartest students in the Animal kingdom. Experts suspect that he has a language of his owns and trainers have long known that he can learn to toot a horn, play ball and do other fancy tricks.  He lives in the watery but he is a mammal., and all mammals must take their oxygen from the air.

The porpoise is a sociable animals and we always find him with a group of his happy friends and relatives. His cousins the long nosed dolphins tend to swim in the deeper oceans. But the porpoise enjoys life along the coasts and makes many trips into harbors and rivers. Unlike the dolphins, the porpoise has a rounded nose.  However neither the dolphins nor the porpoises use their noses for breathing.  They axe members of the cetacean order of animals, which makes them small cousins of the mighty whales, Many people mistake them for fishes but they area of course Mammals. All the cetacean animals have lungs and must come to the surface to breath air in and out.

The porpoises the dolphins and the whales have nostrils on the top of their heads. The nostrils are called blowholes and some of the big whales have two of them. The Porpoise has only one. When he goes below the watery the blowhole closes like a valve. When he comes above the water, the blowhole opens and the porpoise puffs out his stale air and fills his lungs with fresh air.

His puffing is quite loud as he breathes, and for this reason he is sometimes called the puffing pig. Some whales can stay below and hold their breath fbr 20 minutes or more. The porpoise must breathe more often. As a rule, he stays near the surfaoe., swinmling along in curved plunges which take his body in and out of the water. He can take a breath of air with every leap from the water. He is a very agile animal and can swim along at 35 miles an hour. He can, when he chooses, leap 10 feet above the water. Since the porpoises sleek body weighs More than 100 pounds., this is quite an athletic feat.

The porpoise gives the impression of being a carefree animal who enjoys life to the full. The corners of his closed mouth turn up in what seems to be a broad smile.

We know he is very smarts because he is so full of curiosity. When he sees  Surfboard, a swimmer or any other unusual object in the water, the porpoise cannot resist the temptation to poke it with his nose and perhaps turn it over, just because He wants; to know what it is.