What Is a Gray Whale? Fun Facts for Kids

If you have ever stood next to Clara and tried to comprehend what you were looking at, you already know the answer to this question on a gut level. But let's go deeper.

Gray whales are among the most fascinating animals on the planet. They are ancient, they are enormous, and they do things that seem almost impossible for a creature that size. Here are some of the fun, basic facts about gray whales.

The Basic Gray Whale Facts for Kids

Gray whales are baleen whales, which means they have no teeth. Instead, they have plates of baleen, a tough, bristly material made of keratin, the same protein as your fingernails, hanging from their upper jaw. They use these plates to filter food from the water and sediment they scoop from the seafloor.

An adult gray whale typically grows between 42 and 50 feet long and can weigh up to 45 tons. That is 90,000 pounds. If that number doesn't mean anything to you, you are not alone. Humans are not wired to comprehend weight at that scale. Here is a comparison that helps: 90,000 pounds is roughly the same as ten African elephants, assuming each elephant weighs about 9,000 pounds.

Ten elephants. Standing in your gymnasium.

Gray whales live between 55 and 70 years, though some individuals have been estimated to live into their late seventies. They are found in the North Pacific Ocean, spending summers feeding in the cold waters of the Bering and Chukchi Seas near Alaska and Siberia, and winters in the warm lagoons of Baja California, Mexico.

The World's Longest Commute

Gray whales hold the record for the longest migration of any mammal on Earth.

Every October, as Arctic ice pushes south, gray whales begin swimming toward Mexico. They travel day and night at about five miles per hour, hugging the coastline of North America the entire way. The round trip, from Alaska to Baja California and back, covers between 10,000 and 16,000 miles annually, depending on the individual whale.

To put that in Wisconsin terms: the distance from Wausau to Los Angeles is roughly 2,000 miles. Gray whales swim the equivalent of that trip five to eight times every single year.

They make this journey almost entirely without eating. Gray whales feed intensively during summer in the Arctic, building up enormous fat reserves, then live off those reserves for most of the migration and winter. By the time they return north in spring, some whales have lost nearly a third of their body weight.

The Strangest Eaters in the Ocean

Of all the things gray whales do, their feeding behavior is the most surprising.

Gray whales are bottom feeders, the only whale species known to feed primarily on the ocean floor. When it is time to eat, a gray whale dives to the seafloor, rolls onto its side, and sucks up a massive mouthful of mud and sediment. Then it pushes the water and mud out through its baleen plates, trapping the tiny invertebrates, mostly small crustaceans called amphipods, inside.

They are vacuum cleaners. With baleen.

This feeding behavior leaves distinctive craters in the seafloor, sometimes thousands of them in a single area. Gray whales tend to favor rolling onto their right side, which is why many individuals show more wear on the right side of their baleen, the same way a right-handed person wears down a pencil.

Each gray whale eats about 1.3 tons of food per day during feeding season. Over a summer, a single whale consumes more food than most people will eat in a lifetime.

Babies That Grow Like No Other

Gray whale calves are born in the warm lagoons of Baja California, usually in January or February. A newborn gray whale is already about 14 to 16 feet long and weighs around 2,000 pounds at birth.

Then the real growth begins.

Mother gray whales produce milk that is 53% fat. Human breast milk is about 2% fat. This extraordinarily rich milk fuels growth at a rate that is almost hard to believe. Calves can drink up to 80 pounds of milk per day. By the time a calf is weaned, about seven months after birth, it has grown to roughly 27 feet long and weighs around 15,000 pounds.

The milk itself has been described as having the consistency of toothpaste. It has to because liquid milk would simply dissolve in the ocean. The fat content is so high that it barely flows at all, which allows calves to nurse underwater without losing nutrition to the surrounding seawater.

The Friendliest Giants in the Ocean

Here is a gray whale behavior that surprises almost everyone.

In the calving lagoons of Baja California, gray whales have become famous for approaching small boats on their own. They surface next to vessels, allow people to touch them, and seem to actively seek out human contact. Researchers and whale watchers have described mother whales lifting their calves up to be petted.

Nobody knows exactly why this happens. These are the same animals that whalers once called "devilfish" because of how fiercely they fought when harpooned. And yet in their calving lagoons, they approach humans voluntarily and appear to enjoy the interaction.

One documented behavior: gray whales have learned to swim alongside certain fishing boats because the hull brushing against their skin helps scrape off barnacles and whale lice. A gray whale can carry hundreds of pounds of barnacles on its skin. Getting them scraped off is apparently worth swimming up to a boat.

Students in LaCrosse watch Clara the whale inflate

Families in Wausau learn about gray whales

Students in Wautoma learn about gray whales

Gray Whales and Clara

Clara, Forest Whales' 56-foot inflatable gray whale, is on the larger end of what has been documented for the species — most gray whales grow between 42 and 50 feet, though some individuals reach 50 feet and beyond. Given the natural variation in any wild population, a gray whale of Clara's size is entirely plausible.

She does not have teeth, does not have a dorsal fin, and has the characteristic mottled gray skin with barnacle patches that make gray whales instantly recognizable. She also has the slightly arched upper jaw and the series of knuckles near her tail that distinguish gray whales from other species.

When you walk inside Clara and look up at the curved walls around you, you are standing inside an accurate representation of what it would feel like to be inside a living gray whale. The scale is real. The experience is real.

The ocean is farther away than it seems. But it is not as far as you think.

Forest Whales brings gray whale science to schools, libraries, and communities across Wisconsin and the Midwest. To learn more or book a program, visit forestwhales.com.