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Ocean Currents

Filter Feeding Explained

Acquire the feeding differences between whale sharks and baleen whales

Humpback whale
Looking down the throat of a humpback whale, the baleen plate is visible. ©Myer Bornstein

Suddenly out of the deep blue water appears a whale shark directly beneath me. The gentle giant moved gracefully to the surface of the water and began feeding adjacent to me. I had been snorkeling off the coast of Tofo in Mozambique and felt that this was a dream come true. Experiences like this brand me appreciate the variety of nature'south feeding techniques. You see whale sharks and baleen whales are both filter feeders, animals that eat by straining tiny food, like plankton, from the water. But how they become well-nigh filter feeding is completely dissimilar.

In whale sharks, teeth don't play a major office in feeding. In 1 of their filter-feeding methods, they suction water into their mouths at loftier velocities while remaining stationary. Food moves through filtering pads that cover the archway of their throats. The filtering pads are wide mess pads total of millimeter-broad pores that act similar a sieve, allowing water to pass through while capturing food particles.

Baleen whales feed in an entirely different way. In that location are 12 baleen whale species divided into 4 families, each of which has a slightly different feeding method. Baleen whales were named for the long plates of baleen that hang in a row (similar to the teeth of a comb) from their upper gumline. Baleen plates are flexible, strong and fabricated of a poly peptide similar to our fingernails. These plates are broad at the whale's gumline and taper into a fringe that forms a drape inside the whale's mouth. Generally, baleen whales strain large volumes of bounding main water through their baleen plates, trapping the food on their baleen. Their nutrient (tons of krill, other zooplankton, crustaceans and small-scale fish) are licked off their baleen using their tongue and swallowed.

Gray whales, a family of baleen whales, are bottom feeders. They suck sediment and small-scale benthic crustaceans called amphipods from the sea floor. To practise this, they slowly swim on their sides and filter their food through their baleen plates. Past feeding this way, they often go out long trails of mud backside them, and "feeding pits" in the sea floor.

Similar other baleen whales, right whales filter their food through their baleen plates, simply they practise it in a dissimilar way. They're skimmers. Along the surface of the water, right whales swim with their mouth open up, so food is defenseless in the baleen fringes within their oral cavity.

Whale sharks and baleen whales are both filter feeders, but when you expect at the details of how they feed, you realize how different they are. Understanding creature behavior such as feeding means nosotros tin meliorate protect them from our human activities and live together in harmony.

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