Tag: whale

nevaurs:

vinebox:

This family’s boat ride turned into a dramatic whale rescue — and the whale spent an hour thanking them in the best way!

i’m actually crying and as a side note, fuck sea world

So, this is great, but The Dodo is a source that anthropomorphizes far too much. I don’t think the whale was trying to thank them by breaching for an hour on end. There’s no way she would understand that they liked that. More likely she was still hurting from the net and was trying to ease the discomfort, or she could have been playing because she was loose. 

That’s a whale of some sort, clearly, a baleen (filter-feeding) whale. If you watch, there’s a ring of bubbles that pops up shortly before the whale does. That’s a bubble net, a ring blown by the whale to herd the small fish into a school. Going by that, it’s a humpback whale. They’re more predatory than other baleen whales, going after larger fish and intentionally corraling them, but still only eat small fish. You can see all the little fish jumping when the whale comes up- those are what it’s after.

if you managed to get yourself into the whale’s mouth, it would open its mouth and let you out. Their throats are only about as big around as an orange, they can’t swallow you. Unlucky birds, sure, but not humans. They occasionally catch sea lions by mistake and just spit them out.

In short, the maw rising from the water to engulf several thousand fish is horrifying, but harmless.