Photo by Sho Hatakeyama on Unsplash

When you are on a cruise and you see a giant humpback whale breaching or mugging, it simply makes you forget everything in the world. You are simply overtaken by a euphoric feeling. They are such fascinating creatures, and these humpback whale facts that we’re discussing today are even more fascinating.

1 – Unique Pattern on Underbelly

We know that every human has unique fingerprints. Interestingly, it is the same case with patterns on humpback whales’ underbelly. These patterns are white in colour, and researchers use them to identify one from the other.

2 – Teeth

You may have a scary image of a whale with big and sharp teeth, but interestingly, humpback whales do not have teeth. What look like teeth are known as baleen plates, and they are actually soft. They are simply like bristles that help them filter their food from the water.

3 – Migration

Like other sea creatures, they also migrate. What differentiates them from others is the distance they cover, which could be as far as 16,000 miles. The basic reasons of their migration are feeding and mating in the summers and winters respectively.

4 – Blow Holes

Unlike other fish, they have two blow holes and each one is connected to one lung. They use blow holes to breath, but they can control breathing with their minds unlike humans.

5 – Songs

They are very famous for whale songs and their songs can be heard 20 miles away. The duration of one single song could be as long as 20 minutes and can repeated on a loop for many hours.

6 – Diet

They love to eat krill, a very small aquatic animal like a shrimp. One humpback whale eats around 1.5 tons of krill every day.

7 – Existing Humpback

Their population numbers are estimated to be close to 40,000.

8 – Breeding

The pregnancy of a humpback whale general lasts for a year. It conceives every 2 to 3 years.

9 – Calves

The calves require a diet of around one hundred pounds of milk once a day.

10 – Easy Prey

Since they are too huge, they swim at a slower pace as compared to other fish. Their slow pace makes them easy to be trapped and hunted. Now it is illegal to hunt them.

11 – Playful Activities

It might not be expected of a huge fish to jump in the air, but they somehow do jump. This is commonly called breaching. They also tail slap, mug, and poke their heads out of the water.

12 – Pod

They gather in a couple, or groups of three or four, known as a pod. A pod could be formed of a mother and its calves.

13 – Size

A female humpback whale is longer than a male. The average length of a female is around 50 feet. The male can be as short as 10 feet. The weight is around 40 tons.

These are a few humpback whale facts known to men yet, whereas there are organizations which are dedicatedly studying them such as Centre of Whale Research. It means we can expect to find a few more humpback whale facts.

*PR collaboration