Whales are a group of mammals that live in oceans. They include some of the largest animals on Earth. The blue whale is the ...

Whales' lungs are particularly efficient at taking up oxygen when they breathe air in and out through their blowholes at the water's surface. Special adaptations help them hold their breath for a long ...

“One big difference is that whales are often traveling thousands of miles across ocean basins–great whales undertake the longest migration of any mammal,” says Roman. “So they connect areas close to ...

When diving to such great depths, whales face two challenges: storing enough oxygen to hunt successfully and withstanding the enormous pressure. High pressures change the uptake of gas in the body.

As a whale breaches the surface, it opens its blowhole. It then forces warm air from the lungs into the cold atmosphere. The temperature change triggers water vapor in the whale's breath to ...

The lab is also awaiting results from the whales’ lungs. David Schofield, NOAA regional standing coordinator, said the two whales were part of a pod of six that were being monitored due to ...

Now we can add whale urine to that list, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications. “Lots of people think of plants as the lungs of the planet, taking in carbon dioxide, and ...

When whales migrate from their cold feeding grounds to warmer breeding waters, they carry tons of nutrients in their urine.

“Some proportion of their mass is now plastic.” A blue microplastic fiber turned up on this glass fiber filter from the lung tissue of a beluga whale. The samples in this study were acquired from 32 ...

but some humpback and other whale populations are rebounding after several decades of concerted conservation efforts. “Lots of people think of plants as the lungs of the planet, taking in carbon ...

Unlike fish, whales have lungs, not gills. That means they must return to the ocean's surface to breathe. Like other mammals, ...