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| Photo courtesy of Stan Shebs |
Hello Explorers! It's time for the critter of the week! In honor of the new baby at the Georgia Aquarium, our featured critter is the beluga whale! Beluga whales are the true white whales of the north. The white color helps to camoflaug...e them among the ice flows. Baby belugas, called calves, are born grey so they can hide in their mother's shadow. Belugas do not have a true dorsal fin, which is a good thing since belugas travel under the ice, and a dorsal fin would just scrape or bump against the ice. Instead they have a dorsal ridge on their back. These whales are known as the canaries of the deep, due to their different high pitched vocalizations. Belugas are very talkative. Since these whales live in the northern oceans of the world, they have a lot of fat, called blubber. One unique feature about the beluga is that, unlike other whales and dolphins, the neck vertebrae are not fused together, which allows for the beluga to turn its head side to side.
Read more about this sea canary here:
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