THE LARGEST ANIMAL THAT EVER LIVED 



A bird is limited to the weight which its wings can 

 bear up in the air. A land animal, if it becomes 

 too large, cannot hold its body off the ground or move 

 about readily and is doomed to certain destruction. 

 But a whale has to face none of these problems and 

 can grow without restraint. The sperm and right 

 whales float when killed, but the fin whales usually 

 sink although the specific gravity of their bodies is 

 but little more than that of water. 



Because whales live in a supporting medium their 

 young are of enormous size at birth, in some instances 

 the calf being almost half the length of its mother. 

 I once took from an 80- foot blue whale a 2 5- foot 

 baby which weighed about 8 tons. The calf was just 

 ready for birth and was fully formed, the whalebone 

 being about three inches long. 



At Aikawa a sperm whale 32 feet in length con- 

 tained a foetus 14 feet, 8 inches long, and in Alaska 

 while a 65-foot finback whale was being drawn out of 

 the water upon the slip she gave birth to a 22-foot 

 baby, which, of course, was dead. 



Not long ago I read an account of a happy event 

 of this sort which was said to have occurred on the 

 Labrador coast, where the baby whale flopped off into 

 the water and swam away. This was, of course, not 

 true, for the foetus would die with its mother, but 

 when such stories once find their way into print they 

 are difficult to stop. 



The wonderful strength of the blue whale is almost 

 beyond belief, and I have listened to many stories from 

 Norwegians which I would not dare repeat here al- 



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