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1 answer
332 views

Why are beavers not considered marine mammals?

They spend a lot of their lives in the water, they have fur, give live birth, have mammary glands etc...but my teacher mentioned that beavers have continually growing teeth (incisors) which supposedly ...
Devi's user avatar
  • 13
2 votes
1 answer
162 views

Why do fish and marine mammals need special low density adaptations for buoyancy?

When one reads about fish and marine mammals, it is always said that for example blubber of marine mammals helps them with buoyancy because it is so low density and similarly for example sharks have ...
user67748's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
271 views

Do whales ever just hang out on the surface breathing?

You only ever hear of whales surfacing for a brief second to exhale/inhale before they dive back down. But do they ever just stay at surface level, laying there with their blow hole up in the air, ...
o01's user avatar
  • 121
1 vote
0 answers
225 views

How do marine mammals stay hydrated?

This is a question that has always bothered me. A quick internet search yields "metabolic processes" as the reason for how marine mammals obtain water, but what are those processes and why don't land ...
BlackThorn's user avatar
18 votes
4 answers
894 views

What sea animal is this?

I am in a remote village and a young boy (second pic holding tail) says this thing is his friend. This creature is safe, we held it for pictures and released it after. None of us know what this is and ...
Jude's user avatar
  • 181
2 votes
1 answer
247 views

Why do sea mammals die on land, and drown on sea?

It's quite confusing to me, why do sea mammals die on land, but also die from drowning if they couldn't reach the sea surface to breath? Excuse my ignorance but I am really confused!
Him's user avatar
  • 121
3 votes
1 answer
94 views

Was mammal body better suited for some type of the marine environment than the body of fish?

When some of the land mammals came back to the oceans, they seem to be successful in the competition with fish at least in some environment even though they seem to have a huge disadvantage in the ...
Probably's user avatar
  • 2,436
2 votes
2 answers
497 views

What are the migratory patterns of Orcas in the Pacific Northwest? Do they pass by Vancouver in the Fall?

What are the migratory patterns of Orcas in the Pacific Northwest? Do the pass by Vancouver in the Fall? I know you can never predict the sightings of a wild creature, but I was wondering what the ...
Butterfly and Bones's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
348 views

How do marine mammals and penguins maintain bone density?

After much searching on Google with no results, I decided to ask my question here. If I'm not mistaken, swimmers' bone density is less than normal; at least for lifetime swimmers. Astronauts also ...
Rene's user avatar
  • 31
9 votes
2 answers
13k views

How do marine mammals control buoyancy?

Presumably, as a whale or seal dives, its lungs get compressed by the increasing water pressure, and it gets less buoyant. Under this model, for a given amount of air taken in at the surface, the ...
SuperElectric's user avatar
20 votes
2 answers
37k views

How and why did mammals go back to the oceans?

If I understand evolutionary biology correctly, mammals first evolved on land as small, rodent-like creatures, in a time when reptiles were dominant on land. Eventually, they diversified into the ...
HDE 226868's user avatar
  • 1,415
6 votes
3 answers
7k views

What is the fastest marine mammal?

When I did a research, most of the sources say that orca is one of the fastest. But I could not find a source that says it is actually the fastest. Some sources say that Dall's porpoises rival orcas ...
ermanen's user avatar
  • 1,147