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The throats of all beaked whales have a bilaterally paired set of grooves that are associated with their unique feeding mechanism, suction feeding. [9] Instead of capturing prey with their teeth, beaked whales suck it into their oral cavity. Suction is aided by the throat grooves, which stretch and expand to accommodate food.
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]
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]
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.
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 ...
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.
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]
Baleen whales have two blowholes positioned in a V-shape, while toothed whales have only one blowhole. [6] The blowhole of a sperm whale , a toothed whale, is located left of centre in the frontal area of the snout, and is actually its left nostril, while the right nostril lacks an opening to the surface and its nasal passage is otherwise well ...