Orcas are somewhere in between these behemoths and land mammals. Like the larger whales, they are big enough to be extremely powerful, capable of overwhelming nearly everything in the ocean if they choose. However, since they are a smaller whale, they have retained much of the grace, agility, and speed of their fellow dolphins. Orcas can zoom through the water at speeds up to 34 miles an hour and then frolic and play like their bottlenosed cousins. Besides the relative weightlessness it imparts to air-breathers, one of the important qualities of water, since it is so much denser than air, is
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