Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Long-finned pilot whale skeleton. Pilot whales are mostly dark grey, brown, or black, but have some light areas such as a grey saddle patch behind the dorsal fin. [4] Other light areas are an anchor-shaped patch under the chin, a faint blaze marking behind the eye, a large marking on the belly, and a genital patch. [4]
Skeleton of a long-finned pilot whale. Despite its common name, the long-finned pilot whale is actually a large species of dolphin. The same is true of orcas and several other small whales. It has a bulbous forehead and is black or dark grey in colour with light-grey or white markings on the throat and belly regions. [14]
The name "pilot whale" originated with an early theory that pods were "piloted" by a leader. Other common names include the "pothead whale" (after the bulbous melon), and "blackfish" (a catch-all term used to designate numerous species of small, dark-colored toothed whales, including the pygmy sperm whale and false killer whale).
Sperm whales, narwhals, many members of the beaked whale family, several species of the porpoise family, orcas, pilot whales, eastern spinner dolphins and northern right whale dolphins show this characteristic. [22] Males in these species developed external features absent in females that are advantageous in combat or display.
London's Natural History Museum has installed a four-and-a-half-ton blue whale skeleton to tower over the heads of visitors.
The most conspicuous fossils are the skeletons and bones of whales and sea cows, and over several hundred fossils of these have been documented. [9] Wādī al-Ḥītān (Whale Valley) is unusual in having such a large concentration of fossil whales (1500 marine vertebrate fossil skeletons) in a relatively small area.
A newly discovered ancient species of whale may be one of the largest and heaviest animals on record, a new study has found.
The Golden Bay Museum – Te Waka Huia o Mohua has displays on Abel Tasman's 1642 encounter with Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri (the local Māori tribe), Golden Bay's industrial past, and a pilot whale skeleton. It opened in 1990 after a fundraising effort by the community purchased the collections of the privately owned Takaka Museum.