Whales in a dream may represent a relationship or a business project that the dreamer considers too enormous to handle. The dreamer may fear that they will, in effect, be swallowed up. Alternatively, large bodies of water are symbols of the unconscious, so that a whale, as a mammal at home in the water, can also represent a wholesome relationship between one’s conscious and unconscious mind.
any one aquatic mammal of the order Cetácea. Length, 1.2–33 m. The fusiform, gently streamlined bare body merges imperceptibly with the laterally compressed tail, which ends in a horizontal, bilobed fin. The anterior extremities evolved into fins and the posterior ones disappeared, although the remnants of the pelvic bone are still found deep in the posterior muscles. The hair, the sebaceous and sweat glands, and external ear are reduced. Under the skin there is a thick layer of fat. Whales do not have mobile lips. From the outside, the neck is insignificant. The valved nostrils, of which there are one or two, open on the sinciput. The lungs are very elastic. The testes are concealed in the abdominal cavity. In the female, the teats are embedded in pouches of skin located in the posterior half of the body on either side of the urogenital groove. Whales have spongy skeletons. The facial bones are drawn out into a pointed rostrum. The vertebral column lacks a sacral segment. There are about 17 pairs of ribs, one to 11 pairs of which are connected to the sternum.
Because of the low sensitivity of the cetacean respiratory center of the medulla to the accumulation of CO 2 in the blood, whales can remain under water for a long time without coming up for air. (Sperm whales can stay submerged for about 1½ hours.) The whale’s low sensitivity to CO2 is due to an abundance of myoglobin—a substance that gives the muscles a dark color and makes possible the transfer of a large quantity of oxygen from the surface of the water to the oxygen reserves in the capillary network (the “miraculous network”). When the animal submerges, the heartbeat slows sharply, and the blood flow is redistributed in such a way that the brain and heart muscle are the first to receive oxygen. The muscles obtain oxygen from the myoglobin.
Of the whale’s sense organs, the auditory ones are the best developed. Because the right and left ears are separated from the skull bones by air chambers filled with foam, whales can determine accurately the direction from which a sound is coming. Sound is transmitted to the inner ear through a narrow auditory canal and middle ear ossicles as well as through the lower jaw, which is innervated by a branch of the trigeminal nerve. The tympanic membrane resembles a folded umbrella. Taste, touch, and skin sensitivity are well developed. Vibrissae located in the head are the whale’s tactile organs. Vision plays a subordinate role. The eyes are small, with a spherical crystalline lens and thick, flattened cornea. The tear glands have virtually disappeared. In the course of evolution, whales have lost their sense of smell.
The order of whales is divided into two suborders: the toothless, baleen, or whalebone (Mysticeti) and toothed (Odontoceti) whales. The toothless whales include three families: right whales (Balaenidae), rorquals or finback whales (Balaenopteridae), and gray whales (Eschrichtiidae). The toothed whales are subdivided into four families: sperm whales (Physeteridae), beaked whales (Ziphiidae), dolphins and porpoises (Delphinidae), and river dolphins (Platanistidae).
In the oceans of the world from the arctic to the antarctic there are 38 genera of whales, including 83 species. There are 25 genera in Soviet waters, including 32 species (mostly dolphins). Many whales migrate regularly within the northern and southern hemispheres, going to warm waters in winter to reproduce and to cold waters in summer to fatten. Between 1924 and 1969 about 11,000 whales were tagged by scientists. The experiment revealed that toothless whales travel about 5,000–10,000 km. Normally, however, they do not cross the equator, and they return to the same localities.
Toothed whales feed primarily on fish and cephalopod mollusks, whereas the main food of toothless whales is planktonic crustaceans, which are filtered through the whalebone. Toothed whales have from two to 240 teeth.
Whales usually give birth to one large calf once every two years. (The calf may be one-third to one-half the length of the mother’s body. Some whales give birth more often because they are able to mate even before the period of lactation is over.) The lactation period ranges from four months in small dolphins to one year in sperm whales. Almost three times richer in protein and ten times richer in fat than cow’s milk, whale milk helps the young whales to develop quickly. Sexual maturity is reached in two to six years. The life span ranges from 30 to 50 years. Whales travel in families or schools.
The ancestors of the whales (probably predatory Creodonta) evolved into aquatic animals almost 60 million years ago. A total of 127 genera of extinct whales are known. Fossil remains of the most ancient whales (archaeocetes) are known from the Lower Eocene epoch. Dating from the Upper Eocene are fossils of primitive toothed whales (Squalodontidae), and from the Middle Oligocene, fossils of the most ancient toothless whales (Cetotheriidae). The right and rorqual whale families appeared in the Miocene epoch. In the USSR fossil whales have been found in Lower Oligocene strata in the Caucasus and in Upper Miocene strata in Moldavia, the Crimea, and the Caucasus.
Whaling is regulated by the International Whaling Commission. Because of the complete ban on hunting certain toothless whales, the number of them has tended to increase.
A. G. TOMILIN