How many young does the whale produce?
A pair of pesky flies can produce half a billion descendants during a summer season. A magnificent whale, giant of the deep oceans, produces only one offspring in two years, and it takes the youngster 12 to 14 years to grow to his full size. The baleen whales and the toothed whales, the grampuses and the narwhals, the dolphins and the porpoises all belong in the animal order cetacea. They are descended from ancestors that left the ancient seas ages ago arid learned to cope with life on the dry land. They were warm blooded, air breathing mammals with legs for walking over the ground and perhaps fitted with coats of hair or warm fur. Later, much later, these bold adventurers returned to the seas, perhaps in search of food. They never returned to the land, and in time their legs became flukes and fishy flippers, far more useful for swimming through the watery oceans. But the cetaceans remained mammals. Their air breathing young were born alive and fed on mother’s milk. The mother cetacean
