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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]
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]
Beaked whales have several anatomical adaptations to deep diving: large spleens, livers, and body shape. Most cetaceans have small spleens. However, beaked whales have much larger spleens than delphinids, and may have larger livers, as well. These anatomical traits, which are important for filtering blood, could be adaptations to deep diving.
Fossils have revealed an ancient marine reptile with a loosely connected jaw that allowed its throat to balloon out to a massive size so it could filter feed the way right whales do today.
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.
Coronula diadema is a species of whale barnacle that lives on the skin of humpback whales and certain other species of whale. [2] This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in the 1767 12th edition of his Systema Naturae. [1]
Now, sperm whales are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. So, in order to sell the animal's tooth, it must be over 100 years old, and the owner has to know where it's been since the ...
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 ...