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A beaked whale is any of at least 22 species of whale in the family Ziphiidae. Several species have only been described in the last two decades. Six genera have been identified. They possess a unique feeding mechanism among cetaceans known as suction feeding. They are characterized by having a lower jaw that extends at least to the tip of the ...
A stranding is when a cetacean leaves the water to lie on a beach. In some cases, groups of whales strand together. The best known are mass strandings of pilot whales and sperm whales. Stranded cetaceans usually die, because their as much as 90 metric tons (99 short tons) body weight compresses their lungs or breaks their ribs. Smaller whales ...
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.
Whales are fully aquatic, open-ocean animals: they can feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 tonnes (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the
There are now four cetacean species living in or regularly visiting the busy waters east of the Golden Gate — harbor porpoises, gray whales, humpback whales and bottle-nosed dolphins.
The traditional hypothesis of cetacean evolution, first proposed by Van Valen in 1966, [9] was that whales were related to the mesonychians, an extinct order of carnivorous ungulates (hoofed animals) that resembled wolves with hooves and were a sister group of the artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates). This hypothesis was proposed due to ...
Whales do not form a clade or order; the infraorder Cetacea includes dolphins and porpoises, which are not considered whales in the informal sense. [citation needed] The phylogenetic tree shows the relationships of whales and other mammals, with whale groups [citation needed] marked in green.
The sei whale, or Rudolph's whale (Balaenoptera borealis), lives mainly in the North Atlantic and avoids enclosed seas, [22] but occasionally makes occasional incursions into the Mediterranean, although this is considered exceptional [12] and restricted to Spain and France. [14] The sei whale is classified as "endangered" on the IUCN Red List. [23]