The biggest animal there has ever been
Why Is a Whale Not a Fish?
A blue whale is longer than three buses — and it would drown if it could not reach the surface.
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Step 1 of 5
A whale holds its breath.
A sperm whale can make one of those breaths last more than an hour. A fish has gills that strain air out of water, so it never surfaces. A whale has lungs like yours. It fills them at the top, dives, and everything it does down there happens on one breath.
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Step 2 of 5
The spout is not water.
The plume you see is the whale's warm breath turning to mist in cold air, exactly like your breath on a winter morning. A little seawater is flicked up from around the blowhole with it.
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Step 3 of 5
It is warm inside, all the time.
A fish is as cold as the water around it. A whale keeps itself warm whatever the sea is doing, which is why it can live under the ice and a goldfish cannot.
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Step 4 of 5
Whale babies drink milk.
A calf is born tail first and pushed straight up for its first breath. Then it is fed on milk so thick it is nearly a paste, which is how it puts on weight fast enough to survive cold water.
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Step 5 of 5
Nothing has ever been bigger.
A blue whale is bigger than any dinosaur that ever walked. Its heart is the size of a small car, and its tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant.
A blue whale eats some of the smallest animals in the sea. It takes a room-sized mouthful of water and strains out shrimp the size of your fingernail.
The short version
A whale breathes air, stays warm and feeds its babies milk — it is not a fish, it is a mammal that went back to the sea.
Try it yourself
Breathe out hard on a cold day and watch the cloud. That is exactly what a whale's spout is, only much bigger.