REPRODUCTION 



38^ 



Figure 216. A young Bottlenose Dolphin being suckled. Marineland Aquarium, Florida. 

 [Photograph : R. J. Eastman, Miami, Florida.) 



maximum quantity of milk in a minimum time. By the time the young 

 Bottlenoses were six months old, the number of feeds was reduced to about 

 seven times a day. Sea-cows which generally stay submerged for longer 

 periods were observed suckling their calves for ten minutes at a time. 



It is impossible to say how much milk a Cetacean calf ingests with each 

 feed, and the literature is full of contradictory statements which vary from 

 three and a half pints to fifty gallons. Considering that primitive cattle 

 like zebu and water-buffalo cows produce about fourteen pints of milk a 

 day, and considering also the composition of Cetacean milk (see below) 

 and the high metabolic rate of young whales, we may, however, take it 

 that some 130 gallons is by no means an overestimate of the daily milk 

 production of large whales. Each of the forty daily feeds would then 

 produce about three and a quarter gallons of milk, a figure which is, of 

 course, subject to revision on closer investigation. 



Cetacean milk has a creamy white colour, and is occasionally tinted 

 pink. It often has a slightly fishy smell and its taste is reminiscent of a 

 mixture offish, liver. Milk of Magnesia and oil. For these reasons, whale's 



