You may love hearing people’s secrets, but with animals, you can’t. Bats make squeaks that are way too high for us to hear, and elephants make sounds that are too low for us! Whales “sing” really weird noises to each other that we can hear only with special underwater microphones – but whales can hear it from hundreds of miles away, underwater. Maybe they’re just learning how to sing in the shower.
Wee ones: If you listen to 4 singing elephants and 6 singing whales, of which animal are there more?
Little kids: If a whale is singing an 8-minute song, what numbers do you say to count down the minutes? Bonus: Whale songs string together 3-minute chunks of song called “themes.” If a whale song strings together 3 themes, how long is the song?
Big kids: If a whale sings to another whale 500 miles away, and that whale sings to a 3rd whale who can hear it from up to 600 miles away, what’s the farthest that 3rd whale can be from the 1st? Bonus: What’s the closest it can be to the 1st whale?
Answers:
Wee ones: More whales.
Little kids: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Bonus: 9 minutes.
Big kids: 1,100 (also called “11 hundred”) miles. Bonus: It can be right where the 1st whale is! That spot is just 500 miles away, so it’s inside the 600 miles.
