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[19] [20] The male genitals are attached to a vestigial pelvis. [21] The body is wrapped in a thick layer of fat, known as blubber. This provides thermal insulation and gives cetaceans their smooth, streamlined body shape. In larger species, it can reach a thickness up to one-half meter (1.6 feet).
Whales have two flippers on the front, and a tail fin. These flippers contain four digits. Although whales do not possess fully developed hind limbs, some, such as the sperm whale and bowhead whale, possess discrete rudimentary appendages, which may contain feet and digits.
In a process of convergent evolution, marine mammals such as dolphins and whales redeveloped their body plan to parallel the streamlined fusiform body plan of pelagic fish. Front legs became flippers and back legs disappeared, a dorsal fin reappeared and the tail morphed into a powerful horizontal fluke. This body plan is an adaptation to being ...
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.
The skim-feeders are right whales, gray whales, pygmy right whales, and sei whales (which also lunge feed). To feed, skim-feeders swim with an open mouth, filling it with water and prey. Prey must occur in sufficient numbers to trigger the whale's interest, be within a certain size range so that the baleen plates can filter it, and be slow ...
A pair of adult female right whales, Koala and Curlew, have mystified researchers this winter as they cruised south along the Florida coast, then made a surprise appearance this week off Alabama ...
The beluga's body shape is stocky and fusiform (cone-shaped with the point facing backwards), and they frequently have folds of fat, particularly along the ventral surface. [38] Between 40% and 50% of their body weight is fat, which is a higher proportion than for cetaceans that do not inhabit the Arctic, where fat only represents 30% of body ...
The melon is structurally part of the nasal apparatus and comprises most of the mass tissue between the blowhole and the tip of the snout. The function of the melon is not completely understood, but scientists believe it is a bioacoustic component, providing a means of focusing sounds used in echolocation and creating a similarity between characteristics of its tissue and the surrounding water ...