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Penguins natural enemies8/31/2023 They are also ravenous for other whales just as dogs are for other beasts. "There is another kind of whale called the grampus, which grow no longer than twelve ells and have teeth in proportion to their size, very much as dogs have. Killer whales are featured for their gluttonous appetite: For a seafaring people like the Norwegians, this was vital information. The animals in the sea get special attention, and a varied and detailed knowledge of many species of whale is included in the book. The book is called "The King's Mirror" (Kongespeilet) and includes in-depth information about the furthest reaches of his kingdom, including Iceland and Greenland - handy knowledge for Håkon's descendants to enforce their sovereignty in such an extensive realm. Somewhere between the years 12, the Norwegian King Håkon Håkonsson had a book made with instructions to his sons about his kingdom and how to rule it, a kind of fatherly introduction to the ins and outs of being a king. They are also ravenous for other whales just as dogs are for other beasts." King Håkon Håkonsson The killer whale's behavior when hunting larger prey was also noted in another ancient book. Pliny's portrayal of killer whales as monstrous was an image that would cling to them for centuries. Pliny doesn't describe in detail what killer whales looked like and it is possible that he had never seen them himself but was relying on descriptions from seafarers and others who had come across them. Pliny asserts that the desperate whales are well aware that their only resource is to take to flight in the open sea and to range over the whole face of the ocean while the orcæ, on the other hand, do all in their power to meet them in their flight, throw themselves in their way, and kill them either cooped up in a narrow passage, or else drive them on a shoal, or dash them to pieces against the rocks. (Image credit: Universal History Archive /Getty Images) Pliny tells how big baleen whales sought shelter in secluded bays to give birth to their calves and then adds: "This fact, however, is known to the orca, an animal which is peculiarly hostile to the balæna, and the form of which cannot be in any way adequately described, but as an enormous mass of flesh armed with teeth."Įngraving showing Pliny the Elder, author of "Historia Naturalis," in discussion with emperor Vespasian. Related: Mystery orcas with bulbous heads wash up dead in unexplained mass stranding But they were still different enough that Pliny grants them a chapter of their own apart from the other fish. The fact that they were marine creatures living in the water was the determining factor - they belonged with the fishes. This is something they had probably learned from studying dead whales and dolphins found on the shore. That was not as such a bad mistake as it sounds despite that Pliny and others before him knew very well that whales were mammals that nursed their young from milk glands, breathed air with lungs and not gills, and had forelimbs instead of fins. Killer whales appear in volume nine, "The Natural History of Fishes." Here Pliny dedicates a whole chapter to whales, which at that time were classified as fish. Pliny's comprises no less than 37 volumes. "Naturalis Historia" is not short though (neither is Bryson's book, come to think of it).
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