184 ] Fish and Their Fabulous Neighbors 



planation is that the noise and excitement and the evident vitality 

 of the divers discourage the sharks. 



The "Man-Eater": Actually the biggest member of the shark 

 family, the whale shark, is quite harmless to humans, eating only 

 small fish, jellyfish, and shell creatures. By way of contrast, the 

 great white shark, which is found in all warm seas, comes legiti- 

 mately by its other name of "man-eater": It will devour almost 

 anything it can find, including humans as well as other sharks. 

 The victim need only be disabled or too small to defend itself. 



Neighbors of the Fish 



WHALES BIGGEST MAMMALS OF THEM ALL 



Whales are the biggest animals in the world. Fully grown, 

 one of them may weigh ten times as much as an elephant! The 

 heroic whale-hunters in the palmy days of Nantucket and New 

 Bedford created one of the imperishable epics of American history 

 when they sailed the seven seas in search of this mighty prey. 



The enormous size of the whale is bound to impress a child. 

 He is likely to be even more amazed when he learns that whales 

 are mammals though they live in water, as fish do. "How come, 

 then, that they're mammals?" he will surely demand. 



Whale "Babies": One proof that whales are mammals is the fact 

 that the babies are born alive and are nourished by their mother's 

 milk. Whale calves are undoubtedly the biggest babies produced 

 by any kind of animal, although their size depends on the size 

 and species of the parent. Occasionally it has been possible to 

 record birth weights, and we have a record of an eighty-foot blue 

 whale that bore a four-ton baby! The whale mother nurses her 

 calf by means of a special compressor muscle that injects into its 

 mouth milk which looks exactly like cow's milk. 



Whales Have Hair: Like land-dwelling mammals, whales are 

 warm-blooded; this means that the blood remains at pretty much 

 the same temperature regardless of how warm or cold the animal's 

 surroundings may be. But how about the remaining test of a 

 mammal: Does the whale, with its bare skin, meet the mammal 



