290 



WHALES 



Figure i6g. A 55-foot Sperm Whale has an intestine 

 with a true length of 500 feet, i.e., the length of a 

 normal street with 25 houses on either side. 



Dolphins and Mysticetes have a very short 

 coecum which is absent in all other Ceta- 

 ceans, in which, therefore, there is no clear 

 transition bet^veen large and small intestine, 

 bothof which look identical as, in fact, they 

 do in most Carnivores. 



While watching the flensing of a 

 Cetacean carcass, spectators are invariably 

 struck by the enormous quantities of 

 intestinal matter which appear. Measure- 

 ments will show that a large Sperm Whale 

 of, say, fifty-five feet long has an intestine 

 some 1,200 feet long (Fig. 169). This is 

 almost two furlongs, i.e. roughly the length 

 of a street with sixty-five houses on either 

 side. However, the intestines of all animals 

 stretch on removal, and we must not be 

 deceived by their apparent length after 

 dissection. Thus man's intestine, which 



measures 154 inches inside the living body, stretches to about 340 inches 

 at autopsy. At death, the intestinal muscles of all animals relax - they 

 lose their tonus, as biologists say - and automatically stretch to 2-3 times 

 their normal size, particularly when they are pulled out none too gently. 

 If we divide the external measurements by 2-5, our Sperm Whale must 

 have had an intestine about 500 feet long - still the length of a street 

 with twenty-five houses on either side. 



Expressed as a percentage of body length, the Sperm Whale's intestine 

 represents 2,400 per cent - a formidable figure indeed. The dead intestines 

 of Fin Whales represent 400 per cent, of Little Piked Whales, Humpback 

 Whales and Bottlenose Whales 550 per cent, of Beaked Whales 600 per 

 cent, of Gangetic Dolphins 730 per cent, of Killers and Bottlenose 

 Dolphins 820 per cent, of Belugas 1,000 per cent, of Narwhals 1,100 per 

 cent, of Risso's Dolphins and Common Dolphins 1,200 per cent, of White- 

 sided Dolphins 1,400 per cent, and of porpoises 2,200 per cent. By and 

 large, therefore, the smaller the animal, the greater the percentage length 

 of its intestine, which is only to be expected from the fact that as an animal 

 becomes smaller its surface area decreases proportionally to the square of 

 the decrease in length. Hence in a very large animal, the surface area of 

 the intestine becomes too small to carry out its essential task of secreting 



