What are differences between whales and fish?

What are differences between whales and fish?

The most basic difference between the two is that whales are warm blooded mammals, whereas fishes are marine animals. Whales are not fish! Whales are mammals, whereas fishes are aquatic animals. Fishes and whales are both vertebrates, and live in similar aquatic environments.

What do most bony fish have?

Bony fishes share several distinguishing features: a skeleton of bone, scales, paired fins, one pair of gill openings, jaws, and paired nostrils. Osteichthyes includes the largest number of living species of all scientific classes of vertebrates, more than 28,000 species.

What do bony fish have that other fish don t?

They do not have fin spines, but instead support the fin with lepidotrichia (bone fin rays). They also have an operculum, which helps them breathe without having to swim. Bony fish do not produce placoid scales, instead they consist of three types of scales that do not penetrate the epidermis in the process.

What are the similarities and differences between the whale and fish?

Fish and whales are both vertebrates, which means they both have backbones. They also live in aquatic environments. Except for a couple of species, whales live only in the ocean water. Fish, however, inhabit both fresh and salt water.

Why whale is not fish?

Whales are warm blooded, which means they keep a high body temperature that does not change in the cold water. Fish are cold-blooded, so their body temperature changes depending on the temperature of their environment. Fish lay eggs, which must still grow into a baby fish. So whales are indeed mammals and not fish!

What are the differences between bony fish and cartilaginous fish?

The principal difference between bony fish and cartilaginous fish is in the skeleton makeup. As previously mentioned, bony fish have a bone skeleton whereas cartilaginous fish have a skeleton made of cartilage.

Why do fish and whales have different breathing organs?

Whales and dolphins are mammals and breathe air into their lungs, just like we do. They cannot breathe underwater like fish can as they do not have gills. After each breath, the blowhole is sealed tightly by strong muscles that surround it, so that water cannot get into the whale or dolphin’s lungs.

Why are whales considered mammals and not fish?

Mammals all are warm-blooded animals, they breathe air, have hair, and moms feed their babies milk from mammary glands. Whales actually do all of these things! Whales are warm blooded, which means they keep a high body temperature that does not change in the cold water. So whales are indeed mammals and not fish!

What is whale milk?

What is whale milk like? As a general rule, whale milk is rich in fats and comes in very large quantities! The blue whale has the largest mammary glands on Earth – each is about 1.5m long and weighs as much as a baby elephant. Blue whale mothers can produce 200 litres of milk per day with a fat content of 35-50%.

What kind of bones does a whale have?

Whales have real bones. Real bones made with real calcium. (Shark skeletons are mostly cartilage. Maybe the person that was thinking cartilage was thinking about sharks.) Whale bones are on display in many museums and can be found on many beaches where a dead whale washed ashore or maybe where a beached whale died.

What makes a whale a mammal and not a fish?

Like mammals, whales and dolphins breathe air through a pair of lungs, they are warm-blooded, their young drink milk, and they have hair (although very little). The whale is actually the closest living relative of the hippopotamus. So whales are indeed mammals and not fish!

How does a whale breathe like a fish?

They come to the surface of the water so they can breathe just like you and me. Fish get oxygen directly from the water through their gills. Whales even have a little bit of hair on their smooth skin, usually on the top of their head.

Are there any sea creatures that do not have bones?

A simpler question to answer would be what sea creatures DO have bones. Fish, marine reptiles, birds and marine mammals, which are vertebrates, have bones. The rest don’t. Which is not to say they don’t have hard parts; crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, isopods.