Whereas humans breathe through their nose and mouth, whales have a blowhole on the top of their head—or two in the case of baleen whales. This is “like a nostril,” says Cunningham. While it’s not the same as the human nose, this is where they breathe in and out.


When a whale surfaces after this impressive breath hold, Garrard says the tell-tale noise you hear “is them breathing out” before they inhale and dive back underwater. Often depicted in cartoons as a spout of water, she clarifies that “what we’re actually seeing is the whale’s breath.” As warm air from the whale’s lungs meets cold air outside, it condenses into a cloud, like seeing your breath on a cold day. This cloud also inclcovering the blowhole when the whale exhaled.