does water animals have a “home”?

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Land or air animals usually have a home or a region where they live like next to bird nests, next to river, etc. Does the same happen for water animals? Like when a whale migrate, when they go back, they go to the same region or they just find another cold water place? Or when turtles need to deposit eggs, they always go to the same specific beach. Or just some random fish who doesn’t swim too far sleep at the same hidden place everytime.

In: Biology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It depends on the critter and what you consider to be a “home”. Lots of whale species are either migratory or hang around within roughly the same area with varying degrees of territoriality. Sometimes the migratory whales do so for mating reasons, but most of them migrate to where the food is. Whether you consider the Southern Ocean or the North Atlantic to be “home” or not depends on your definition, I suppose.

Most turtles return to the same beaches to lay their eggs. However, they only lay their eggs one one night of the year and then they’re back in the water. They’re also probably pretty uncomfortable and nervous while they schlep up and down the beach and lay their eggs, so I’m not sure they’d feel particularly “at home” during the process.

Fish are the most diverse vertebrate group on the planet so there are a bajillion strategies there. Some fish absolutely find a nice place to call home. A clownfish will have a home anemone, Moray eels live inside holes in rocks, all kinds of coral reef fish find safe places in and around the coral reef. However, large pelagic fish (those that live in open water and never come into contact with the bottom) are often found throughout huge areas (e.g. all of the tropics, most of the South Atlantic ocean, the entire Indian Ocean, etc.) Some pelagic fish, such as Great White Sharks, don’t have a home region at all and just swim wherever they want. It all depends on the critter.

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