17 
ZOOLOGICAL NOTES 
By Clive E. Lord and H. H. Scott 
Dolphins at Play. 
Drying to lack of funds and the 
general increase in cost of all the es¬ 
sentials for such camps as are organised 
by the club, we have found it impossible 
in recent years to charter a vessel in order 
to carry out dredging operations. This is 
to be regretted, as we have had to fore¬ 
go our studies of many of the interesting 
forms of animal life, particularly that 
relating to the lower orders. This year 
we were fortunate in observing a unique 
display by a large number of dolphins in 
Maingon Bay, and this fact has suggested 
the idea of giving a short general descrip¬ 
tion of the Tasmanian whales and dol¬ 
phins as the basis for the zoological notes 
of this year's camp report. In previous 
years it has been the custom to deal with 
the minute forms of aquatic life, so the 
alteration may prove a welcome deviation. 
Students may note that whales are di¬ 
vided into two sitb-ordens—the whalebone 
whales (Mystacoceti) and the toothed 
whales (OdontocoHi, the latter including 
the dolphin family. Before proceeding 
to discuss these two divisions, however, 
it might be as well to recall a few elemen¬ 
tary facts in relation to these inter¬ 
esting aquatic mammals. For it must be 
remembered that all Cetaceans are mam¬ 
mals, and not fish. They are warm 
blooded and 'breathe air by means of their 
hings, and have no such organ as the 
gills of a fish. The tail is not vertical (as 
with fish) but horizontal, and this al¬ 
lows the animal to plunge either upward 
or downward in a very short space of 
time. 
By muscular contraction the whole bulk 
of the body can be reduced, thus causing 
less displacement during the act of diving, 
while the sudden act of unrolling, at 
great depths, helps to shoot the animal 
to the surface. The chief muscles so 
employed are similar to those that roll a 
hedgehog into a ball. The nostrils aril 
placed high on the head to permit o8 
easy breathing, and the water that ap¬ 
pears to be thrown up when a whale 
''spouts” is not water discharged from 
the lungs as one naturally supposes, but 
is the hot air condensing,’ on reaching a 
cooler atmosphere, into a visible vapour. 
An added effect is also given on occasions 
owing to the whale expelling the used air 
from its lungs a short time before the 
nostrils are clear of the water. The 
whales store oxygenated blood, and not 
pure air to keep them alive when below 
the water line, a marvellous series of 
storage cells being provided in the vascu¬ 
lar system for this object. The sloths 
also store blood to enable them to sus¬ 
tain the muscular effort of hanging to 
a limb for days at a time. 
