Humpback

A giant creature that I admired since very little and saw the humpback whale on tv for the first time.

So big, enigmatic, friendly, loving and in its way athletic in its element of water.
And their song that means so much more than you still know scientifically today.
There are many stories about how the humpback whale have saved both humans and other creatures from for example shark attacks.
It's great to see these great creatures jump up from the water and hit the surface with their big body.

The humpback whales belong to the bard whales and eat only during the hunting season which is during the summer period, the rest of the period they live on their fat reserves. Depending on the area, they eat krill, herring and other shoal fishes that they stun with their bubbles, rings into a bubble net or strike with tails or pectoral fins. When the humpback whale hunts in pack, they make a bubble net in a large circle, where the diameter of the circle can be up to 30 meters. The bubble net becomes like a visual barrier where the humpback whales make the circle smaller and smaller where they finally go up to the surface with an open mouth and catch the mass of fishes. In practical and theoretical terms, a human can easily fit into the whale's mouth, but the pharynx is too small for us to be swallowed.

The humpback whale has something called bards and are comb-like slices that are of the protein keratin, which means that they are not as hard as, for example, teeth in other animals. These discs help to filter the food from the water.

The humpback whale swims alone or occasionally in temporary small groups. During the summer period, when it is hunting, they can gather in larger groups to hunt fishes together.
They usually swim 6-12 km/h, but during their hikes they increase their speed to 27 km/h.
 
The humpback whale can grow up to 19 meters and weigh up to 40 tonnes (approximately 20 passenger cars). The average length is around 12–14 meters, where the female is usually a little longer than the male.

A newborn calf is about 4–5 meters long and weighs about 1300 kg. A whale mother goes pregnant for 11 months and becomes the most common pregnant every two years.
The first thing the mother does when her baby is born is to push her baby up to the surface to get her first breath.
The baby is breastfed for about 6 months and then starts to hunt and eat its own food but have milk from her mother up to the year.

The humpback whale has wart-like nodules spreading over the head and lower jaw that are reformed hair follicles. On the tubers, barnacles often grow, making the tubers even more visible.
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Like our fingerprints, the tail and pectoral fins have a personal appearance and pattern, making it easy to recognize individuals.