Beluga Whale
The beluga is a vocal whale; it makes a lot of different sounds from bird-sounding chirps to mighty roars.
Like all whales, the beluga whale uses these sounds to communicate with each other..
It also has a all kinds of facial expression; these, too, may be also used for communication. The beluga whale
once roamed the oceans in herds of ten-thousands. Too much hunting by humans hunting has reduced its numbers.
Now large herds of beluga whales gather only when returning to the shallow waters where they live. Each herd is divided into smaller groups, or pods, of breeding or bachelor males and females with young. Pods spread out in the places where they feed but join up again for the yearly migration to the places where they breed.
The beluga hunts in small groups, eating worms, crustaceans, and fish that live in schools or on the seabed. Working in small groups of five or six, the whales herd their prey into shallow waters, or toward the shore. The beluga whale "talks" to other whales in the hunting group. The beluga's teeth, which appear when the mammal is about two to three years old, are not used for feeding, since the beluga whale swallows its prey whole. All the same, they wear down, probably because the beluga whale rubs them together to make sounds--another way to communicate. Unlike other kinds of whales, the beluga has a very flexible neck and is able to move its head from side to side. This flexibility allows the beluga whale a wide sweep of the ocean floor when hunting for prey. Its flippers are very flexible too; they enable it to move very easily in all kinds of tight situations, even backwards if it is necessary.
Mating occurs from April to June. The dominant male mates with more than one female. After the mating season, the beluga whale migrates south to warmer coastal waters and arrives in June to July. A female, pregnant from last year's mating, will split into a small nursing pod. She gives birth to one single calf, who arrives tail first, underwater, and then swims to the surface of the water to breathe. The newborn calf is grayish brown and turns a lighter gray after a couple of years. It does not turn white until it becomes an adult. After about a month, when the calf is strong enough, all the beluga whales migrate back to the colder Arctic waters. The young beluga suckles from its mother for about two years.
The beluga whale was easy prey for whalers of the nineteenth century. Whalers forced the belugas onto beaches, stranding them. Thousands of whales died this way. The beluga is no longer killed for its meat in Western waters, since it contains toxic levels of poisonous marine pollution. Now, the main threats to its survival are pollution of shallow coastal waters, the building of hydroelectric dams that alter its habitat, and the widespread disturbance of its breeding grounds.
It lives in the coastal waters of Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of North America, Greenland, Europe and Asia. Present population of the beluga whale is unknown but thought to be recovering from heaby causualties as a result of eighteenth and nineteenth century whaling. Modern threats include pollution and disturbance of breeding grounds.
We got our information from the "Wildlife Fact File".
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