The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

Fig. 84.

Skeleton of a Whalebone Whale (Mysticete), and Section of the Mouth with Whalebone.

b, blowhole; a, upper arm; fa, fore arm; h, hand; p, th, l, small remains of pelvis or hip-bone, thigh, and leg; r, roof of the palate; w, w, plates of whalebone; f, whalebone fringe.

We see then that the whale undoubtedly belongs to the same type as the four-footed land animals, although it branched off into the water so long ago that it may have come from some very early milk-giver. But why then has it become so like a fish? For the same reason that the penguin’s wings have become so fin-like, and the seal’s arms and legs have become flippers, namely, that during the long time in which the whales have taken to a watery life, those which could swim best and float best in the water have been the most successful in the struggle for existence; and as a fish’s shape is by far the best for this purpose the warm-blooded milk-giver has gradually imitated it, though belonging to quite a different order of animals.

Fig. 85.

The Humpback Whale[187] suckling her young (after Scammon).

We saw this imitation already beginning in the seals, with their bodies sloping off towards the tail and their legs fastened back in a line with the body; but they have not gone so far in this direction as the whales have, since they still have hind legs and furry bodies. The sea cows, on their line, have gone a little farther, for they have lost their hind legs, and their skin is smooth, with very few hairs upon it. But it remained for the whales to take up the best fish-form, the old spindle-shape, thinning before and behind, with the strong fleshy tail ending in two tail lobes, which act like a screw in driving the body along.

Any good drawing of a whale shows at once how admirably these animals are fitted for gliding through the water (see [Fig. 85]). True, many of them have enormous heads, but these always have long face-bones ending in a rounded point, and even the huge head of the sperm whale (see [Fig. 87]), eighteen feet long, six feet high, and six feet wide, is rounded off above, and gradually thins away below, like the cutwater of a ship. The eyes are very tiny and so little exposed, that it is difficult to find them; there are no outer ears, though the bones within are large and probably very useful for hearing in water; the bones of the neck are seven, as is the rule among milk-givers, but they are so flattened and firmly soldered together, and so covered with blubber, that there is not even a hollow between the head and the body; while to crown all, the skin is perfectly smooth so as to offer no resistance to the water. Here, however, would be a disadvantage in the loss of the furry covering, since most of the whales travel into cold seas, were it not compensated by the great mass of oily fat or blubber which fills the cells in the under part of the skin, and keeps the whole body warm; and thus the whale, by a covering of fat often as much as a foot and a half thick, solves the problem of a warm-blooded animal, with a smooth gliding body, living in icy water without having its blood chilled.