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Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and porpoises. Dolphins and porpoises may be considered whales from a formal, cladistic perspective.
One of the misconceptions people have about whales is that they live in the ocean because these animals are fish. The truth, however, is that whales are not fish; they are actually marine mammals.
More than a century ago, in 1895, two Smithsonian scientists described a new kind of deep sea creature living at least 1000 m (3,280 ft) below the ocean’s surface— a part of the ocean that we still know very little about. The scientists named their find the whalefish because of its whale-like appearance.
Cetacea. Cetacea (/ sɪˈteɪʃə /; from Latin cetus ' whale ', from Ancient Greek κῆτος (kêtos) ' huge fish, sea monster ') [3] is an infraorder of aquatic mammals belonging to the order Artiodactyla that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Key characteristics are their fully aquatic lifestyle, streamlined body shape, often large ...
Whales are warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing marine mammals that give birth to their young and nurture them with milk and care, while fish are cold-blooded, gill-bearing animals that lay eggs often leave their children to fend for themselves after birth.
Cetomimidae is a family of small, deep-sea beryciform ray-finned fish. They are among the most deep-living fish known, with some species recorded at depths in excess of 3,500 m (11,500 ft). Females are known as flabby whalefishes, Males are known as bignose fishes, while juveniles are known as tapetails and were formerly thought to be in a ...
Whales are cetaceans and fall into two categories: baleen (that eat plankton) and toothed (that eat penguins and fish). Mammals breathe air using lungs, bear live young and feed them using mammary glands, and regulate their own body temperature.
Meet the whalefish. A whalefish feels its way through the deep sea. Rows of pores along its back sense movement in dark water. They alert the fish to passing predators and prey. Animal type. Fishes. Habitat. Deep sea. Size.
Whales are mammals, not fish. Although they live in the water and have some physical similarities to fish, whales belong to a different group of animals altogether. There are several features of whales that may cause people to mistake them for fish, despite the fact that they are actually mammals. Some of these features include:
Larger toothed whales, like orcas, eat fish and cephalopods, but also sharks and larger marine mammals including sea otters, seals, sea lions and smaller whales. Different populations of orcas tend to make their meal choices based on their locations—salmon in waters off the Pacific Northwest, herring in waters off of Europe and minke whales ...