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Whales are the largest animals in the world, and their babies absolutely can be enormous. Blue whale calves can be up to 25 feet long at birth and weigh 3 tons, which is larger than the largest great white ever recorded! Once out of the womb, they can add 200 pounds a day, which is the size of a full-grown adult. With the enormous The size of whale babies, you may be wondering about the gestation period of whales. Let’s see how long whales are pregnant and how different whale species compare!
How Long Are Whales Pregnant?
what do whales do, camels, and donkeys have in common? They are three of the animals with the longest gestation periods. Between the three, they can be about 40 months pregnant. (And we thought nine months was tough.)
Whales are usually in the gestation period of 10-18 months. They are part of the cetaceans aquatic infraorder of 90 species including: dolphins and porpoises. Marine mammals, like us, need oxygen and feed their young.
And it all starts with finding a mate who is a mixed bag in the whale kingdom. While most toothed whales do not have ‘long-term commitments’, baleen whales (whales have baleen plates in their mouths to squeeze plankton out of the water) are usually monogamous. This is the case during any reproductive period.
Gestation time of different whale species
Earlier we said that whales can have a gestation period of 10 to 18 months, which is a gap almost as long as a human pregnancy. Let’s take a closer look at the gestation periods of different whales:
Orca 15-18 months.
Sperm 14-16 months.
Humpback 11 months.
Beluga 14-15 months.
Blue 10-12 months.
Narwhal 14 months.
End 11 mo.
Gray 12 months.
N. Atlantic Right 12 mo.
Common Dwarf 10 months.
Southern Right 12 mo.
Sei 11 mo.
Short finned pilot 15 months.
Dwarf sperm 274 days
Baiji 10 months.
Long finned pilot 16 months.
Northern bottlenose dolphin 12 months.
Sowerby’s Beaked 12 months.
How Long Are Blue Whales Pregnant? Does Size Affect Whale Gestational Age?
During pregnancy, whale embryos are nourished by the placenta which receives nutrients from the mother’s bloodstream. Sounds familiar?
Their size is irrelevant to how long they carry their offspring. The Porpoise and the Blue Whale – the largest animal on earth – both carry their young for about 11 months.
The longest gestation period for a dolphin is the killer whale, which can go up to 18 months! Researchers believe that killer whales’ longer gestation periods aid in the development of their advanced brains.
How Whale Calves Are Born
Calves are born with the tail first. Once they give birth, mothers carry them to the surface to get their first breath of oxygen. They take care of her milk with a high fat content, from 16-46 percent, and growing rapidly in size and weight to 60 lbs. a day like gray whale calves.
(And again, blue whale babies can grow at 200 pounds a day!)
Usually only one calf is born because mothers do not produce enough milk to feed twins. Care for some whales can last from 4 months to more than a year. During that time, mothers and calves form a close bond. The young stay with their mother until they can hunt on their own and they go with the migration.
Migration and Reproduction of Whales
Some whales are always on the move and others, like the toothed whale, not so much. Two of the reasons why: whales migrate is so that they can feed and give birth in warmer waters. Their calves won’t be born with enough blubber to withstand extremely cold conditions and their bodies won’t need the undue stress.
There are variants of migration. For example, it is the pregnant female of the right whale species that migrates. Of humpback whales, both sexes migrate.
Most toothed whales don’t seem to have migratory habits. Of sperm whales, the females and calves remain in the breeding areas close to the equator for their entire lives, while the males tend to venture into colder waters alone without breeding.
Baleen whales migrate, have been tracked and recorded, and appear to have similar patterns in their travels. Both humpback and gray whales migrate extensively.
“…Both species have migrations totaling over 10,000 miles round trip, with the longest recorded migration being a 13,988 mile journey by a gray whale from Mexico to Russia and back. Not only do these animals have the longest migrations for whales, it’s the longest migration for any mammal.”
For most species, reproduction is seasonal, each winter and spring, and ovulation naturally coincides with male fertility.
Certain whales cannot eat for months. They metabolize energy from the oil in their bone marrow and blubber in the spring and summer. During those feeding months, they can eat as much as 4% of their body weight each day.
Suffice it to say, these cetaceans seem to have a system that works for them in every way. Their pairing, their migration and
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regnancy, the birth experience, the bonding that takes place… We can learn a lot from these unique creatures! But we probably won’t be eating plankton or giant squid anytime soon.
Final note: This information is based on a natural phenomenon that occurs in wild cetaceans and not in captivity. Captive whales can have a life expectancy of up to ½ of that in the wild. Also, their behavior can be very different and sometimes the exact opposite of what happens in nature.
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