Whales have belly buttons! Just like other mammals, the baby is attached to its mother by an umbilical cord. After the baby is born, the cord snaps off and its left with a belly button, just like you!!

Whales have bad breath! If one day you get very close to a whale when it blows, it would smell very fishy. Perhaps the bad smell comes from its diet of fish and from living in the sea.

Whales can stay under water for an amazing amount of time. You can only stay under the water for a few seconds, but some whales like the sperm whale, can stay under the water for TWO HOURS!

Whales swim very slowly and very fast. Some whales, like the fin whale, can swim over 50 kilometers per hour. That's as fast as you usually drive a car in the city!

Whales can live as long as humans. Most whales live from 15 to 60 years. Some of the larger whales have been know to live up to 100 years!

Whales have HUGE teeth! Some whales have teeth as long 25 cm and they weigh 2 kilograms. That's longer and heavier than a knife that you would use to cut the steak on your dinner plate. I bet that would make the Tooth Fairy happy!

A sperm whale can hold its breath longer than most other whales - up to 2 hours! - and it can dive almost 2 miles down into the ocean!

Can you guess the name of the whale with the longest tooth? It's actually the narwhal. The male narwhal's tusk is actually a tooth. This tooth measures up to 3 metres long! You might call the narwhal the "unicorn of the sea".

Whales eat an enormous amount of food, especially some of the larger whales. A humpback or gray whale or the mighty blue whale, can eat up to 6 tons (that's 12 000 pounds) of krill each day. That's as much as 6,000 boxes of spaghetti! BURP!

When you were born, you probably weighed between 6 and 9 pounds. When a baby blue whale is born, it weighs 4 000 pounds. That's one BOUNCING baby!

A dolphin is actually a whale! One of the smallest members of the whale family, dolphins swim in groups called herds, which is different than their larger "cousins" who swim in pods.

There is a dolphin that always seems to have a smile on his face! That's the Bottlenose dolphin, and the shape of its beak gives it a friendly smiling look.

Dolphins are much like humans. Many like to swim along with boats and play games with people in the water. Dolphins have been known to help humans in distress. Many events of dolphins coming to the rescue of people have been documented. Not long ago, a woman was thrown from an exploding boat and was kept afloat by three dolphins until help arrived.

Dolphins and porpoises are not the same. A porpoise's snout is round, not pointed like a dolphin's. Also, a porpoise's teeth are shaped like spades, while a dolphin has cone shaped teeth.

The whale shark is the biggest shark - 15 metres long.

The scariest shark was the megalodon. It's extinct now, but one of its teeth was the size of a person's hand! OUCH!

The most feared shark, still alive today, is the great white shark, and it is responsible for the most attack on humans.

The smallest shark is the spined pygmy shark, which is about 20 centimetres, or 8 inches, long.

The fastest sharks are the blue shark and the mako shark. They can swim up to 100 kilometres or 60 miles per hour, in short bursts. Wow! Fasten you seatbelt!

The Portuguese shark can dive more than 3 kilometres or 1 1/2 miles deep, and that makes him the deepest diving shark.

The blue shark is the longest migrating shark. Each year it travels 3 000 kilometres from New York to Brazil. That would make this shark the "marathon runner" of all sharks!

Sharks have been around longer than the dinosaurs!

Of all the 370 kinds of sharks, only 70 are considered dangerous.

Besides humans, sharks do have one other enemy. There is a fish in the Indian Ocean called the Moses Solefish. It looks like a stingray. If a shark bites, the Moses Solefish releases fluid that paralyzes then kills the shark.

Sharks really do have some friends! There are two kinds of fish that stay close to the shark. A pilot fish follows the shark and eats the scraps that the shark leaves behind. The Remora is a creature that attaches itself to the skin of the shark and lives off of the parasites on the shark's body. It actually cleans the sharks skin.

Submitted by

Kelli Ewasiuk,
of Mary Hanley Catholic School
and Patti Fleger,
of St. Monica Catholic School.

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