Have you ever seen a whale up close? Well I bet if you did you would be pretty amazed because some can grow up to be as big as a school bus! A whale’s body temperature stays the same even if the air or water around it is very hot or cold.

Like dolphins, whales must come to the surface to breathe air through a blowhole. All mammals have either hair or fur. Though, whales are probably the least hairy. Most whales have a few hairs that disappear before or right after they are born.

Except for the right whale, however, they keep their hair. They have hairs above and below the mouth that look like a mustache and beard. Other than a right whale there are about eighty species of whales.

Baleen is made of keratin, the same material found in your fingernails. Inside a baleen whale’s mouth, there are flat plates that look like teeth of a comb hanging from the whale’s top jaw. All baleen whales have baleen instead of teeth. Toothed whales have real teeth.

These types of whales can have up to one-hundred teeth! Toothed whales are usually quite smaller than baleen whales. Most are less than forty feet long, but others can be as big as sixty feet in length.

Some toothed whales in this group include the beluga whale, the orca, pilot whales, and the beaked whales. Whales are still one of the most fascinating mammals to this very day.