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Another similar feature was the composition of the teeth, which contained mostly calcium phosphate which is needed for eating and drinking by aquatic animals, though, unlike modern day toothed whales, they had a heterodont (more than one tooth morphology) dentition as opposed to a homodont (one tooth morphology present) dentition. [62]
Whales are fully aquatic, open-ocean animals: they can feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 tonnes (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the largest known animal that has ever lived.
If a whale is beached near an inhabited locality, the rotting carcass can pose a nuisance as well as a health risk. Such very large carcasses are difficult to move. The whales are often towed back out to sea away from shipping lanes, allowing them to decompose naturally, or they are towed out to sea and blown up with explosives.
A humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) A leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx). Marine mammals are mammals that rely on marine (saltwater) ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises), pinnipeds (seals, sea lions and walruses), sirenians (manatees and dugongs), sea otters and polar bears.
Cetacea (/ s ɪ ˈ t eɪ ʃ ə /; from Latin cetus ' whale ', from Ancient Greek κῆτος () ' huge fish, sea monster ') [3] is an infraorder of aquatic mammals belonging to the order Artiodactyla that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.
Some of the largest plankton are krill and feed the largest of animals, baleen whales. My first foray into the scientific world was a job sexing Jassa falcata (a tiny amphipod) under a microscope.
Toothed whales are fully aquatic creatures, which means their birth and courtship behaviours are very different from terrestrial and semiaquatic creatures. Since they are unable to go onto land to calve, they deliver their young with the fetus positioned for tail-first delivery. This prevents the calf from drowning either upon or during delivery.
The creatures are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” of critically endangered species. Only about 35 of them are still believed to be alive, and their ...