Ron Bush, age 10, of Reedsport, Ore.,

Is there really a killer whale?

The biggest of the whales is also the biggest animal that ever lived upon the earth. He is the blue baleen whale and though he needs about a ton of food a day, he rarely swallows anything larger than a shrimp. The smaller sperm whale devours great chunks of squid and octopus, but he never threatens his relatives the big whales, the many medium‑sized whales, or the dolphins and pretty porpoises. There is, however, a black sheep in the whale family ‑ the killer whale who preys on his own kind. This fierce and greedy prowler is feared by every creature in the seas.

The baleen whale sifts his food through curtains of baleen, or whalebone. The blue baleen whale may be 100 feet long and weigh more than 90 tons, but he cannot bite or chew and his throat is too small to swallow sizable fish. The sperm whale, maybe 60 feet long, is one of the toothed whales He can bite a large chunk of octopus and gulp it whole. He has been known to attack the whalers hunting him, but he prefers to eat fish and other cold‑blooded creatures. Only one member of the whale family devours warm‑blooded animals ‑ and he is the dreaded grampus or killer whale.

The whales are all warm‑blooded, air‑breathing mammals whose ancestors once lived on the dry land. The baleen whales dine on plankton, a soupy mixture of seaweeds and tiny diatoms, fish eggs and glassy worms. Most of the toothed whales make a good living from the fish, octopus and other cold‑blooded sea dwellers. But the terrifying killer whale devours seals and polar bears and does not stop at cannibalism. He preys on his small cousins the dolphins and porpoises, attacks the giant sperm whale and even the giant blue whale.

The killer is actually a large dolphin, more than 30 feet long.  He is jet black with blotches of white on his underside and maybe behind his eyes. He has a stubby, round nose and his terrible jaws are set with 40 or more cruel teeth. The high black fin on his back pierces the surface of the water and he prowls the world‑wide ocean from the tropics to polar seas,

The killer is a coward, for he never prowls alone. He hunts with a pack of maybe 40 of his bloodthirsty friends and relatives and together they may gang up without mercy on the sperm whale or the gentle giant blue whale. The pack swims in close formation, all diving and rising to the surface together, When their high black fins are seen above the water, the seals and the polar bears scramble onto the land, the dolphins and the porpoises swim away fast and even the big whales try to seek the safety of shallow waters.

The grampus or killer whale can swallow a whole seal and the greedy gobbler is never satisfied. A grampus 21 feet long was once killed by whalers and out open. His stomach showed that he had just devoured 14 seals and 13 porpoises.