Jep Pullin, age 9, of McDonough, Ga. ,for the question:
Do whales lay eggs?
The fishes and most other sea dwellers lay eggs and the whale lives in the sea. But a whale is such a big fells he may weigh one hundred tons. This is enough to make anyone wonder, if whales lay eggs like other set dwellers, what whopping eggs they must be. The fact of the matter is that whales do not lay eggs. There are a great many different whales, but none of them lay eggs. They all give birth to live babies and the Mama Whale feeds her baby on mother's milk, dust as a cat feeds her kittens.
The family tree of the whale.. we are told, begins long, long ages ago. In those far off days, whales were land animals. They had four feet and most likely they had furry coats. The mothers had live babies and fed them dust as cats and dogs feed their babies. These whale ancestors, we are told, hunted for their food by the sea shore. There they found plenty to eat in the water. As time gent on they spent more and more time in the water. They became great swimmers and divers and learned to stay under water for long periods of time without coming up for air.
In time, the whales found that it was not necessary to come ashore for anything at all. They could stay under water searching for food and come up only when they needed a breath of air. There was only one problem the baby whale, like any other air breathing animal, needs a breath of air as soon as he is born. So the mother whale had to help her baby to be born at the surface of the sea.
Not many people get to see the birth of a baby whale. For the really big whales are creatures of the deep ocean. As a rule they travel with a group of friends and relatives called a school of whales. A mother whale has but one baby which is called a calf. Very rarely she may have twins. The baby may be twenty feet long and the smart little fellow is able to swim as soon as he is born.
Ha has to, for he must keep up with his friends and relatives in the school of whales.
The mother nurses her baby for about six months. Then he is able to find his own food. Some whales feed on fish and squid. But the biggest whales are very dainty eaters. They feed on plankton, a sort of seafood salad. The surface of the sunny sea teems with all kinds of tiny plants and animals, many of them too small for our eyes to see. There are baby shrimps, clear as glass, countless fish eggs and all sorts of water plants smaller than specks of dust.
This plankton is the food of the big blue whale, the biggest animal in the world and the biggest animal who ever lived. He sifts it through curtains of baleen in his mouth. The baleen is so called whalebone, long strips of material which look like plastic. When the baby whale grows up, he will need about a ton of plankton every days.