For children: discovering cetaceans

Hello! This page is made specially for you if you are between 8 and 13, or if you want to discover the world of whales, dolphins and other cetaceans in simple words. You are going to learn some amazing things: that a blue whale is bigger than a bus, that dolphins have “first names”, that sperm whales can hold their breath for more than an hour and a half under water.

~90cetacean species

30 mlargest whale

200 yearsoldest whale

3,000 mrecord dive

First of all: what is a cetacean?

Cetaceans are all the sea animals that look like fish but are really mammals: like you, like me, like a dog or a cow. It means that they breathe air (they have to come up to the surface to breathe), that they are warm-blooded, and that the females give milk to their babies.

There are two big families:

The baleen whales, like the blue whale, the humpback whale or the rorquals. They have no teeth: instead, they have baleen, a sort of comb they use to filter their food.
The toothed whales, like dolphins, killer whales, sperm whales or narwhals. They catch their prey with their teeth.

10 amazing things about cetaceans

The blue whale is the largest animal of all time, bigger than the biggest dinosaurs we know of. Its heart weighs about 180 kg (as big as a golf buggy), and it beats only 4 to 8 times a minute when the whale dives!
Dolphins do not sleep the way we do. They close only one eye at a time! One half of their brain sleeps while the other stays awake to breathe and watch out for danger.
Dolphins have first names. When it is small, each dolphin invents a whistle of its own that it uses all its life. And the other dolphins can copy that whistle to call it.
The narwhal has a unicorn horn on its head… well, almost! What looks like a horn is in fact a giant spiral tooth, which can be up to 3 metres long.
Sperm whales have the biggest head in the world. It makes up a third of their body and holds the strangest organ in the animal kingdom: a sac filled with waxy oil that they use to “see” with sound.
Humpback whales sing. Their songs are so complicated that they sound like music. And all the males in the same region sing the same song!
Cuvier’s beaked whale can hold its breath for 3 hours and 42 minutes. That is the world record among mammals. A trained human can manage only about 10 minutes.
Killer whales are the wolves of the sea. They hunt in groups, with different strategies depending on the region: some hunt fish, others seals, and others again great white sharks!
The bowhead whale can live for more than 200 years. Some that are still alive today were already born before Napoleon.
Cetaceans come from the land. Their ancestors, 50 million years ago, were animals that walked on four legs on dry land, a bit like a wolf. And then they went back to live in the sea.

🎨 Pictures to colour in

Here are 6 cetacean pictures to colour in, scientifically accurate silhouettes drawn by the illustrator Chris Huh and used in the reference phylogenetic trees. You can print each picture (one per sheet) or download it to colour in on a computer or a tablet. Do you know their real colours? To help you, we have noted them under each picture.

1. The Blue Whale

Balaenoptera musculus

🎨 Real colours: bluish grey with lighter patches (mottled). Belly slightly paler.

For children: discovering cetaceans

First of all: what is a cetacean?

10 amazing things about cetaceans

🎨 Pictures to colour in

1. The Blue Whale

2. The Sperm Whale

3. The Common Bottlenose Dolphin

4. The Killer Whale

5. The Humpback Whale

6. The Narwhal

🎨 Detailed pictures (zentangle style)

7. The Whale (mandala)

8. The Humpback Whale

9. The Killer Whale

10. The Dolphin (leaping)

11. The Dolphin (another style)

12. The Octopus

13. The Shark

14. The Seahorse

15. The Seahorse (variant)

How can we protect them?

For the more curious