Ok I know I am going out on a limb here as whales are probably not the totem that springs to mind when we think of girl power. But maybe it should be.... did you know....
Whales have BFFs
Yes, they do!
The Mingan Island Cetacean Study group have discovered that female humpback whales not only make friends with one another but reunite each year. Whales are not as unsociable as was once thought. They remember their friends and even find them across the ocean and among other whales.
As any BFF knows, friendship is good for you. Even if you are a whale. Female humpbacks who form friendships are healthier and give birth to more calves each year. When they meet up with each other they simply float along together, eating and enjoying each other’s company. Some of these friendships are known to have lasted up to 6 years.
Interestingly, friendships between females and males (or even male-male friendship) are mostly unheard of. No one quite knows why, but only the girls have BFFs.
Whales have midwives
When a calf is born, the mother whale is usually surrounded by midwives. While the mother recovers the these midwives help the newborn stay at the surface so that it can breathe.
And mother whale deserves the support, if you ask me - blue whales are pregnant for nearly two years! A blue whale calf is 7.5m long at birth. The baby blue whale gains 3.7kg an hour until it is about 8 months old. By this time it weights about 22.5 tonnes. That's a lot of nursing....
The baby blue whale drinks enough milk to fill a bathtub every day. The milk from the blue whale has the consistency of cottage cheese and is about half fat. No wonder someone wrote a poem about milking a whale...
Whales value motherhood
Some female beluga whales have been seen carrying small objects, floats or buoys and even complete caribou skeletons on their heads or backs. The whales treat these objects like calves. Scientists surmise that for the whales, these objects are surrogate babies. Aww.
A group of sperm whales adopted a bottlenosed dolphin with a deformed spine. It is thought that the misshapen dolphin would have been rejected by his own kind, or simply not been able to keep up with them. However, the dolphin was taken in by the gentle whales.
Go on... spread the love...Why not share this post with your BFF today?