Difference between revisions of "AY Honors/Species Account/Balaena mysticetus"

Revision as of 01:10, 15 May 2014

Balaena mysticetus

Bowhead Whale (Balaena mysticetus)

Where found: The bowhead spends all of its life in fertile Arctic waters, unlike other whales that migrate for feeding or reproduction.

Description: Bowhead whales are robust-bodied, dark-colored animals with no dorsal fin and a strongly bowed lower jaw and narrow upper jaw. The baleen plates, exceeding three meters and the longest of the baleen whales, are used to strain tiny prey from the water. The whales have massive bony skulls which they use to break from beneath the ice to breathe. Some Inuit hunters have reported whales surfacing through 60 cm (2 ft) of ice in this method. Bowheads may reach lengths of up to 20 metres and females are larger than males.

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 {{species id
-|common_name=Blue Whale
+|common_name=Bowhead Whale
-|latin_name=Balaenoptera musculus
+|latin_name=Balaena mysticetus
-|image=Faroe stamp 402 blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) crop.jpg
+|image=Bowheads42.jpg
-|description=The Blue Whale is believed to be the largest animal to have ever lived on Earth.  It has a long tapering body that appears stretched in comparison with the much stockier appearance of other whales. The head is flat and U-shaped and has a very prominent ridge running from the blowhole to the top of the upper lips. The front part of the mouth is thick with baleen plates; around 300 plates (each one meter long) hang from the upper jaw, running half a meter back into the mouth. Between 60 and 90 grooves (called ventral pleats) run along the throat parallel to the body. These plates assist with pushing water from the mouth after lunge feeding.  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5MPbZZ4xJA Blue Whale Documentary with orange whale poo]
+|description=Bowhead whales are robust-bodied, dark-colored animals with no dorsal fin and a strongly bowed lower jaw and narrow upper jaw. The baleen plates, exceeding three meters and the longest of the baleen whales, are used to strain tiny prey from the water. The whales have massive bony skulls which they use to break from beneath the ice to breathe. Some Inuit hunters have reported whales surfacing through 60 cm (2 ft) of ice in this method. Bowheads may reach lengths of up to 20 metres and females are larger than males.
-|range=Blue Whales were abundant in most oceans around the world until the beginning of the twentieth century. For the first 40 years of that century they were hunted by whalers almost to extinction. Hunting of the species was outlawed by the international community in 1966. A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 Blue Whales worldwide located in at least five groups. Before whaling the largest population was in the Antarctic but now there remain only much smaller (around 2,000) concentrations in each of the North-East Pacific, the Antarctic, and the Indian Ocean. There are two more groups in the North Atlantic and at least two in the Southern Hemisphere.
+|range=The bowhead spends all of its life in fertile Arctic waters, unlike other whales that migrate for feeding or reproduction.
 }}