冀教版英语八年级下册Unit 3 Animals Are Our Friends拓展阅读一

Many people think that the dinosaur is the biggest animal that ever lived. They are wrong. The world's biggest animal is still living, and it lives in the sea. It is called the Blue Whale. The Blue Whale can be as long as 30 meters and weighs as much as 1,000 kilos. The largest dinosaur weighed only 500 kilos.
The whale is not only the world's biggest animal, but also is one of the cleverest. We know that whales can talk to each other though we do not know what they are saying. We do not yet know how to speak to a whale. One day perhaps we shall learn to speak to whales, and then they will be able to tell us about themselves.
Whales are part of a family of animals called cetaceans(鲸类动物). They are animals that live in the sea. But unlike fish, they do not lay eggs. They have live babies in the same way as cows and cats do, and give their babies milk.
There is a famous White Whale called Moby Dick. He is in a story written by the American writer, Herman Melville. In this story, a sailor called Captain Ahab spends a lot of time trying to find and kill Moby Dick.
Sadly, there are not many kinds of whales left. Men have killed them for thousands of years for food and other things. However, there are now laws to stop people killing most kinds of whales, so perhaps there will be more of them in the years to come.。