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Rorquals (/ ˈ r ɔːr k w əl z /) are the largest group of baleen whales, comprising the family Balaenopteridae, which contains nine extant species in two genera.They include the largest known animal that has ever lived, the blue whale, which can reach 180 tonnes (200 short tons), and the fin whale, which reaches 120 tonnes (130 short tons); even the smallest of the group, the northern minke ...
The family Balaenidae, the right whales, contains two genera and four species. All right whales have no ventral grooves; a distinctive head shape with a strongly arched, narrow rostrum, bowed lower jaw; lower lips that enfold the sides and front of the rostrum; and long, narrow, elastic baleen plates (up to nine times longer than wide) with fine baleen fringes.
Blainville's beaked whales do not capture prey by biting. They use suction feeding to capture prey. They create low pressure in the mouth by retracting tongue, and using throat grooves to expand throat volume. This creates a lower pressure in the mouth than the surrounding waters, allowing the whale to suck in water and whole prey. [12]
Dawn the humpback whale in the Sacramento River in 2007 Cetaceans are the animals commonly known as whales , dolphins , and porpoises . This list includes individuals from real life or fiction, where fictional individuals are indicated by their source.
As the whales swim up to the surface to feed they can hold up to 15,000 gallons of sea water in their mouths. [citation needed] Humpback whales have 14 to 35 throat grooves that run from the top of the chin all the way down to the navel. [3] These grooves allow the mouth to expand. [3]
One of the first anatomical descriptions of the airways of the whales on the basis of a harbor porpoise dates from 1671 by John Ray. [ 28 ] [ 29 ] It nevertheless referred to the porpoise as a fish, most likely not in the modern-day sense, where it refers to a zoological group, but the older reference as simply a creature of the sea (cf. for ...
Dwarf sperm whale calves typically start eating solid food once they have reached a size of around 1.35 m (4 ft 5 in) though are not fully weaned until they reach around 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in). Toothed whale calves generally start eating solid food at around 6 months, and mothers stop lactating after around 18 to 20 months. [7]
A researcher fires a biopsy dart at an orca.The dart will remove a small piece of the whale's skin and bounce harmlessly off the animal. Cetology (from Greek κῆτος, kētos, "whale"; and -λογία, -logia) or whalelore (also known as whaleology) is the branch of marine mammal science that studies the approximately eighty species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises in the scientific ...