Heel boy, heel!
That there is a humpback whale. They seem to be pretty common around Antarctica. In about any video covering Antarctica they will often have some video footage of humpbacks surfacing. Undoubtedly they are feeding on the numerous krill there. It has a similar looking mouth and head to the blue whale which we’ve covered, but it is about half as long growing 40 to 50 feet. An identifying characteristic of the humpback whale is the knobs on the nose and fins, these are actually hair follicles, and it’s incredibly long front fins that are about a third the length of their body. They often breach the water and that’s probably a reason they are a favorite among whale watchers.
As a kid in Maine I remember a humpback whale settling in a little fishing cove. It was cool to see him come up and check out all the little fishing boats, whales always seem real curious. He hung out there for a couple weeks and then moved on.
Another thing in the comic is the way Wally struck the ice. Polar bears often break through ice when hunting, they rear up on their hind legs and then drive their front two paws through the ice. Feeding on whales is also true of polar bears, it’s hard to believe but they do hunt beluga whales. Sometimes belugas will get stranded to an air hole in the ice for a period of time. During this time they have to resurface at that only hole to breathe, that is where the polar bear will attack them at each surfacing, until it wears one down enough to kill it and drag it up out of the water onto the ice. You don’t have to worry about the bear not finishing the meal and wasting whale, there is sure to be another bear to show up and finish the job along with some arctic foxes.
Animal Planet has started regularly playing a couple specials right now you might want to check out. One is called “Massive Nature” and is about animals seeing to their survival in massive numbers. It covers several species but one part features adelie penguins, and the grown chicks’ first trip to the open ocean as well as the leopard seals that prey on them at that time. The other show is “Wild Kingdom: Polar Bear Alcatraz” that follows some bears off the coast of Russia and their struggle in the harsh environment. I haven’t seen that one yet but I set it to record on the DVR.
These are just the first in several new wallpapers. I figured we needed a couple basic Wally & Osbourne ones, these are good if you like a clean desktop or have a lot of icons on your desktop. Tomorrow I think I’ll have some from the cowboy episodes to choose from.
