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| Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) arose from the same common ancestor as the "true" ungulates or hoofed mammals. The female is referred to as the cow and her young is her calf. Some people also refer to the cow as mom and the calf as the baby (my personal preference, but not very scientific).
We see the moms with their babies on both the southbound and northbound migration. On the southbound migration the calves are very small and sometimes hard to see. On the northbound migration they have had some time to nurse in the lagoons and have gotten much bigger, but they are still fun to watch. |
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| We observe the moms with babies traveling both south and north. This chart shows the percentage of cow calf pairs to the total migration counted by the census. We are not seeing all of the cow calf pairs, fluctuations can be due to variable weather as well as shifts in the migratory path preferences. | ||||||||||
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| American Cetacean Society Gray whale Migration Census, Point Vicente for the period 1984 through 2001/2002 |
Graphics by Joyce Daniels
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| Last Revised: |
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