Question

What is the flipper of a whale?

Answer 1

The whale are aquatic mammals that can give birth to young ones. They are the heaviest organisms that have a pair of flippers that are used for locomotion. The flippers are different from that of fins.

Complete answer:
Flippers are broad and flat limbs that are fully webbed and are used as swimming appendages in the case of aquatic vertebrates. Aquatic animals like whales, dolphins have flippers. The flippers are modified limbs that serve the function of movement. A flipper has bones, cartilage, joints and tendons.

In the case of whales, the flippers are two in number which is the modification of the forelimbs. The whale is the Cetacean that uses vertical strokes in movement like other mammals. They have short arm bones which do not have any fingers. The hind limbs in the case of whales are entirely reduced to the vestigial organ which is occasionally present internally. The flippers help in the steering motion. The back muscles of the whale are very large and the propelling movement is carried out with the help of the tail.

Thus, we can say that the flippers in the whale are the modification of the forelimb which help in the locomotion of the animals.

Note: The fins of the fishes differ from that of flippers. The fines do not have any sort of skeletal structure. Rather they have cartilages. In the case of Dolphins, the front limbs are the flippers and the tail is known as fluke. The flippers help in steering whereas the fluke helps in swimming.