Imagine you are a flesh-ripping, four-ton monster. You swim at a speed of 8 kilometres per hour and, whenever you find a small, helpless fish, you kill it with one swift blow and swallow it whole. This is typical behaviour for a long-finned pilot whale, which is a vicious predator that tears its victims to shreds with its large pointed teeth. Luckily for us it is only vicious to fish!
									The long-finned pilot whale lives in the Northern Hemisphere on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It lives in open waters and, generally, does not go near the shore. There used to be a large population of pilot whales in the Northern Pacific but they mysteriously vanished. It lives in cold waters and is known to migrate due to water temperature and also, probably, how much food there is around at the time.
							The long-finned pilot whale normally eats small cephalopods, such as squid or cuttlefish, and sometimes crustaceans. When the waters in which the long-finned pilot whale is swimming do not have cephalopods it is common for it to eat herring and mullet. It is very good at demolishing such species for its teeth are sharp and they have become this way over many years. They are good for ripping bones and flesh from its prey. A male long-finned pilot whale can reach a 5.7m long when fully grown and a female just 4.7m. There are an estimated 750 000 long-finned pilot whales in the Northeastern Atlantic. The male weighs around 4 metric tons. (What a monster!) The female weighs 2 tons. That is probably why it has no enemies or predators - nothing dares to go near it! The long-finned pilot whale is a dull black colour and has an hydrodynamic body, meaning it can swim well through the water. The long-finned pilot whale usually moves at a speed of 8km per hour but, when it is really scared, it can reach a top speed of 46 km per hour. When the long-finned pilot whale emerges its melon appears first, ejecting a blow of up to 5ft, which is visible under any atmospheric conditions even in the tropics! The back appears and then the dorsal fin before the creature dives back down again, occasionally travelling to a depth of 200ft or, sometimes, up to 1km! The dolphin remains underwater for around four to ten minutes. The female long-finned pilot whale becomes sexually mature at an age of 7-10 years old. The male becomes sexually mature at the later age of 11-12 years old. It is a wonderful animal and a good example of God's Work. Let us all work together to keep it alive.