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Animal Themes
Mammals
Polar Regions

Belugas

Belugas
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 6 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   6.74

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    belugas, blubber-less, creamy-white, killing, orcas, ventral, dorsal, maturity, whaling, restriction, alias, top-notch, audible, contamination, fused, insulation

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Other Languages
     Spanish: Las Ballenas Belugas

Belugas
By Vickie Chao 		  
1     Belugas are very cute whales.
 
2     They have creamy-white, chubby bodies. They have bulges (melons) on the tops of their blunt heads. They have beady eyes near the corners of their mouths. They have round flippers on their sides.
 
3     Belugas are also very unique whales.
 
4     They don't have dorsal fins. They don't have fused necks.
 
5     Belugas live in the Arctic where icebergs are common traveling blocks during the wintertime. To survive in this type of hostile environment, they must find a way to better navigate among ice floes. Their solution is to trade in their dorsal fins. Belugas have small, tough ridges on their backs. When they spot an area of thin ice, they use their heads and these ridges to break the ice and make breathing holes. If they had dorsal fins instead of dorsal ridges, they would risk damaging them while cracking the ice.

Paragraphs 6 to 12:
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