Mammals of the Sea: Whales and Dolphins Quiz

Answer: Yes

The Delphinapterus leucas, otherwise known as the white whale, is found in the waters of the Arctic Ocean. It is also called the Beluga Whale. It is white when it reaches adult status. Leucas is the species and translates to white. Delphinapterus is the phylum and translates to "No fins". However, they do have fins. They are on average, 15 feet long and 3,330 pounds.
There are albino sperm whales, but this is not what Captain Ahab was chasing in "Moby Dick".

Answer: The songs range anywhere from about 6-15 minutes.

The "song" of the Humpback Whale or Megaptera novaeangliae, was first studied closely in 1971. The actual translation of their songs is still largely unknown but it is thought to correspond with mating.
The breakdown of the songs is as follows: a phrase is made up of several, repeated elements. Identical phrases are strung together to form a theme and several themes form the whole song. I found this information here: Http://www.abc.net.au/oceans/whale/song.htm. There is a more comprehensive breakdown of phrases, elements, themes, and songs at this site.

Answer: Sonar equipment

In March of 2000, seven whales were found to have beached themselves on a Bahamas beach, near a naval operation. They were found to have inner ear damage, which scientists believe caused them to lose their sense of direction and ability to navigate. This is a rare phenomenon in whales and the fact that the naval base was conducting sonar experiments, led to the study.
This information was released by CNN. The U.S. Navy has not accepted responsibility for the beached whales.

Answer: Sperm whale

A sperm whale's genus is Physeter and its species is catodon. The males weigh about 25 tons and the females weigh around 50 tons. They travel in schools of around 15-20 whales. They have a lifespan of about 50 years, usually mate every three years, and eat octopi and shellfish making them carnivorous.
Killer whales are not actually whales. They are a type of dolphin.

Answer: Pods

Dolphins or Delphinus delphis travel in pods. However, I have also seen them described as a "flock of dolphins" and a "team of dolphins". They also are known to travel in "pods". "Schools" are for cold-blooded fish.

Answer: Open sea

Dolphins can be found in many places in the open sea, but are most frequently are out in the open ocean. Some are found near a coastline, which explains why many people are able to swim with them off beaches. They may be found in gulfs or bays but they are salt-water animals and will most likely not be found in land-locked lakes. Most lakes are composed of freshwater, but some have salt. Unless humans transpose a dolphin from its environment, it is highly unlikely that they would be found in a salt-water lake either. Exceptions are the pink dolphin or Boto (Inia geoffrensis), which is considered to be the largest river dolphin and are found in slow-moving waters of the Amazon, the tucuxi or Estuarine Dolphin (Sotalia fluviatilis), which are also found in the Amazon, as well as lower reaches of rivers from northwestern Venezuela to southern Brazil, the Yangtze finless porpoise, Chinese River Dolphin, or Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer, which can be found all over the Yangtze River in China, among sandbars and dikes, and Irrawaddy dolphin or Snubfin Dolphin (Orcella brevirostris) which can be found in the rivers of northern Australia and southern Asia.

Answer: True

Dolphins are intelligent animals and have been known to elude danger from shark attacks by ramming the sharks in the side with their hard noses. They have also saved more than one human that was in danger of being attacked by sharks, in this manner. There are many species of sharks, including some very small ones that are preyed upon by other fish, as well.

Answer: They have more convolutions in their brain than humans.

Dolphins and whales only have one brain. Some of their species are endangered, but not all of them. In addition, some types of whales have bigger brains than humans, but again, not all of them do.
Convolutions are the twists and wraps in a brain's shape that make up the neocortex. There are several studies that correlate IQ with the number of convolutions in one's cortex, rather then the size of the brain. Both whales and dolphins have more convolutions in their brains than humans, as do some species of elephants that I found while researching this study.

Answer: Bowhead whale

The Bowhead whale or Balaena mysticetus live in the northern waters of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and have been found to live up to 211 years old. This may be an anomaly, but in a study done in La Jolla, California, a scientist named Jefferey Bada studied 48 frozen Bowhead eyeballs and concluded that one of the whales had lived to 211 years old.

The study was concluded to have an accuracy of 16% and the whale could have lived anywhere from 177 to 245 years old. Old harpoon points have been found in these whales that have dated back over a century.

They can grow to be 60 feet long and 120,000 pounds. The oldest blue whale on record is 110 years old and the oldest fin whale is 114 years old. The oldest elephant that I found was 78 and the oldest human being with a birth certificate was 122.

Answer: False

On my initial search of the Internet, I could not find any accounts of dolphin attacks. However, with some guidance, I found out that dolphins have attacked humans. Male bottlenose dolphins have been known to hurt human women, especially in "Swim with dolphin" programs. Several species have been known to rake people with their teeth (an open-mouthed charge is a common dolphin threat) or ram them with their snouts. Karen Pryor has several accounts of such behaviors in her book "Lads Before the Wind." A web site that shows accounts of dolphin attacks is: http://www.ewradio.org/program.aspx?ProgramID=338.