Lets start off this page with a big applause for the dancing shark! Horray! If you want the whole introduction to the page thingy, I'm gonna relocate you to the airplanes page which has my introduction.
I'll start with my favorite animal, the Killer Whale. The killer whale, or orca, is actually a dolphin, (this is actually true) believe it or not. They grow to be between 22 and 26 feet long, but the smallest whale (not including the narwal and the beluga) is about 60 feet long. The average of bottlenose dolphin lengths is about 7 or 8 feet, that means the killer whale is closer to a dolphin in size. Orcas live in groups called pods, sort of like how wolves hunt in packs. They hunt, migrate, and just flat out live in this pod for their entire lives, unless a single orca gets separated from the pod, then it may die, or find annother pod. Killer whales will sometimes beach themselves to get a seal or sea lion to retreave it and bring it back for the pod to share. Orcas are mammals, which means they are like humans, they breathe air and give birth to live young.
Above: two killer whales or orcas
Now that I've taked about killer whales, lets get into some more info about... drum role plese?... I have no clue!
Might as well be sharks, I like sharks (I also like pie but thats beside the point). There are around 440 species of sharks in the world right now. Most sharks are countershaded, meaning that their belly is light and their back is dark, making it blend in with the light in the water. The biggest shark is the whale shark. The whale shark is about 60 feet long and is not dangerous to humans, like whales, the whale shark only eats krill and plankton. Scientists studying the whale shark sometimes ride on its dorsal fin (top fin) or the pectoral fins (side fins). The shark that most people are afraid of is the Great White Shark. The great white is actually more like a whale shark than you may think. They do not actualy like the taste of human flesh, they only attack when agrivated or when the mistake the person for a seal or sea lion. There have only been 65 deaths in 428 years that the great white has caused. Some sharks are gentle, like the Black Tip Reef Shark. The black tip is a 6 foot long shark that lives in coral reefs all around the world. It eats small crustaceons and reef fish, its not even large enough to fit a fully grown human in its body.
Above: a whitetip reef shark, very similar the black tip reef shark, the most common reef dwelling sharks
The gentleness of a dolphin may lead you to beleive that its a little angle, but dolphins arn't always so. Dolphins in the wild have some very unusual behaviors. Like the killer whale, dolphins live in pods. They have a very interesting way of getting food, they circle a school of fish, much like a shark circles its prey, and keep the fish from getting away. One by one, they will swim into the school of fish and devour as much as possible, once one is out, it joins the circle and another dives in for a feeding. Dolphins will also defend their young in a strange way. They swim around their young and make sure that they are safe when a predator is around. If a shark is approching, it will most likely turn around and flee, but if it doesn't, the dolphins will strike at the shark after it has made a move to hurt the young, the shark will retreat as soon as possible after. Dolphins are mammals, meaning they give birth to live young and breathe air, their tails are also horizontle, not vertical, like fish
Below: three bottlenose dolphins
