52 Fun Facts About Humpback Whale

What is the humpback whale's scientific name?

Megaptera novaeangliae took time to settle: first named Balaena novaeangliae in 1781, the humpback was given a string of rival scientific names before today's pairing won out.

A humpback's two blowholes are its version of which feature of land mammals?

The nostrils moved to the top of the head as whales evolved; humpbacks and their closest relatives kept both openings, while dolphins and sperm whales breathe through just one.

After entering San Francisco Bay in 1985, the wayward humpback nicknamed Humphrey swam far up which river?

The Sacramento River took Humphrey to a dead-end slough 69 miles from the ocean during a 26-day detour, until rescuers lured him back to sea with recordings of feeding humpbacks.

Where does the common name 'humpback' come from?

The curve of its back as it dives: the whale arches steeply before going under, lifting the small hump beneath its dorsal fin clear of the water.

About how long is a typical adult humpback whale?

About 15 metres: adults usually measure 14 to 15 m, and females are the bigger sex, typically growing a metre or more longer than their mates.

Which South Pacific island nation is famous for boat tours that let visitors swim with humpback whales?

Tonga: each southern winter humpbacks gather in its sheltered waters to mate and calve, and licensed boats around Vava'u let snorkellers slip into the sea beside them.

What are the bumps on a humpback's head and flipper edges called?

Tubercles: the knobs on the head each hold at least one stiff hair and are rich in nerves, so they are thought to work as sensors, perhaps picking up movement in the water.

What do the bumps along a humpback's flippers do?

Boost lift and cut drag for tight turns: the bumps delay stall, so the flipper keeps working at steep angles, and engineers have copied them for fan and wind-turbine blades.

How do researchers tell individual humpbacks apart?

Researchers photograph the colour patterns and scars on the tail flukes, which whales raise when diving; each underside is as distinctive as a fingerprint.

Scientists can tell a dead humpback's age by counting the layers in which part of its body?

Its earwax plug: wax builds up in the ear layer by layer through a whale's life, and one humpback photographed over many years showed that a new set of layers forms each year.

Which humpback behaviour involves slapping the flukes down on the water's surface?

Lobtailing is slapping the tail flukes on the surface; a peduncle throw is the whole tail crashing sideways. Both may be play, communication or parasite removal.

What are the small crustacean parasites that cling to a humpback's skin commonly called?

Whale lice are not lice at all but pale crustaceans related to skeleton shrimp; they shelter in skin folds and wounds, and one species specialises in humpbacks.

Which humpback hunting technique has been described as a form of tool use?

Bubble nets: a group circles while blowing air, trapping prey in a cylinder of bubbles, then lunges up through it with mouths wide open.

What is the term for a humpback launching most of its body out of the water?

Breaching: a humpback can heave nearly its whole bulk clear of the sea, and researchers think the leaps may be play, courtship or a signal to other whales.

What do adult humpbacks do through the winter months they spend in tropical breeding waters?

Eat almost nothing: humpbacks gorge in cold waters through the summer, then live off their fat reserves for months while they migrate, mate and nurse calves in the tropics.

At Stellwagen Bank, humpbacks flush out which fish by brushing their jaws along the seafloor?

Sand lances shelter at the bottom on Stellwagen Bank, so the whales roll onto their sides and scoop along the seafloor, mostly at night, scuffing their jaws as they go.

Wilhelmina Bay, where humpbacks crowd in each autumn to gorge on krill, lies off which continent?

Antarctica: in autumn 2009 researchers found humpbacks packed five to a square kilometre in the bay, resting by day and feeding all night on a krill swarm of about two million tons.

What do researchers call the male humpback that stays closest to a female and fights off rivals?

The principal escort stays nearest the female and fights off 'challengers'; 'secondary escorts' trail behind. Fights involve tail slashing, ramming and head-butting.

About how long is a humpback whale pregnant before giving birth?

About 1 year: gestation runs 11 to 12 months, timed so that a female who mates one winter in the tropics gives birth there the next.

What do humpback fetuses have that adults lack?

Teeth: humpback fetuses grow dozens of tooth buds in the womb, but these are resorbed before birth, just as the baleen plates start to form in their place.

How long is a newborn humpback calf?

About 4.3 metres at birth: the calf then nurses at its mother's side for up to a year, though it can start on solid food at about six months.

Which Disney film shows a pod of humpback whales flying up through the clouds?

Fantasia 2000: set to Respighi's Pines of Rome, the segment follows a calf that gets trapped inside an iceberg until its mother guides it out, and the whole pod then soars into the sky.

In 1979, which magazine sent a record of humpback whale songs to all 10.5 million of its subscribers?

National Geographic's disc carried recordings made famous by biologist Roger Payne, whose whale-song album is credited with inspiring the Save the Whales campaign and helping to win a ban on commercial whaling.

Which sex of humpback sings the complex breeding-season songs?

Males: only they sing the long songs, mainly on the winter breeding grounds, and researchers still debate whether the aim is to attract females, sort out rivals, or both.

Humpback whale songs appear to follow which statistical law also seen in human language?

Zipf's law: a 2025 study cut eight years of song into pieces the way babies pick words out of speech, and a few pieces proved very common while most were rare, just as with words.

What do researchers call the sudden switch when a whole humpback population drops its song for a new one?

A revolution: instead of slowly drifting, the old song is replaced wholesale, and each new version then passes east from population to population across the South Pacific like a ripple.

A 2023 study found that as humpback numbers recovered from whaling, what happened to singing?

It became less common: as numbers rebounded, fewer whales sang and more fought rivals directly for mates, a sign that singing pays off best when whales are scarce.

Which animal is the main natural predator of humpback whales, targeting mostly juveniles?

The orca: in one study researchers logged 22 attacks on newborn humpbacks, at least 14 of them fatal, as mothers and other adults fought to drive the hunters off.

Humpbacks have been seen charging in to protect which animals from being hunted?

Seals are among ten other species humpbacks have been seen defending; in a review of 115 encounters the whales started most of the confrontations, and the hunted animal sometimes escaped.

Which shark was filmed by drone off South Africa drowning a weakened young humpback?

A great white shark: footage first aired in 2020 shows it biting the whale's tail, then dragging the animal under until it drowned.

How do the barnacles that live on a humpback's skin get their food?

They filter it from passing seawater: the barnacles are riders, not parasites, sweeping up food as the whale swims, though a heavy crust of them adds drag.

A humpback photographed off Colombia in 2013 turned up in 2022 in which ocean, 13,000 km away?

The Indian Ocean: humpbacks usually stay loyal to one breeding ground, yet photos matched this whale off Zanzibar, among a separate breeding population half a world away.

Where does an isolated, non-migratory humpback population live?

The Arabian Sea: genetic tests suggest these whales have been cut off from all other humpbacks for about 70,000 years, and with only about 80 left, scientists have urged listing them as critically endangered.

Where do Hawaii's humpbacks mostly go to feed in summer?

Southeast Alaska and northern British Columbia draw most Hawaiian humpbacks each summer: the whales swim about 3,000 miles each way because food is so plentiful in those cold northern waters.

Where do West Indies humpbacks spend their summers?

Off New England, eastern Canada and Greenland: humpbacks are strikingly loyal to their feeding grounds, so the same whales are photographed there summer after summer.

Which Central American country created Ballena Marine National Park to protect migrating humpbacks?

Costa Rica: 'ballena' is Spanish for whale, and the park's warm Pacific waters draw breeding humpbacks twice a year, northern whales from December to April and southern whales from July to November.

Which country's whaling fleets secretly killed over 48,000 humpbacks while reporting only a few thousand?

The Soviet Union: its fleets kept the true catch secret and filed false tallies, a deception exposed in 1993 when scientist Alexey Yablokov went public with the real figures.

Scar surveys suggest most humpbacks have, at some point in their lives, survived what?

Entanglement in fishing gear: in one drone survey off New York about 87 per cent of humpbacks carried entanglement scars, and gear remains a leading cause of death for large whales.

Humpbacks that summer on Stellwagen Bank winter in a 'sister sanctuary' in which Caribbean country's waters?

The Dominican Republic: its marine mammal sanctuary is paired with Stellwagen Bank, so the same whales are protected at both ends of their migration, where they feed and where they breed.

Which group ran the 2007 online poll that named a humpback 'Mister Splashy Pants'?

Greenpeace was tracking the whale to protest Japan's plan to hunt 50 humpbacks; the joke name took 78 per cent of the vote, and Japan shelved the hunt that December.

Hervey Bay, a famous humpback whale-watching hub, lies in which Australian state?

Queensland: Hervey Bay, sheltered by K'gari (Fraser Island), is a rest stop on the southward migration, where mothers linger with their new calves in September and October.

Migaloo, a humpback first seen off Australia in 1991, is famous for what?

His all-white colouring: tests on skin samples showed Migaloo to be a true albino, and his fame won him special protection, with boats required to stay at least 500 metres away.

Humpback song from Roger Payne's 1970 album was sent into space in 1977 aboard which NASA probes?

The Voyager probes each carry a Golden Record of sounds, music and greetings chosen by Carl Sagan's team, and the whale song is still travelling outward with them.

Which Star Trek film revolves around rescuing two humpback whales?

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home sends Kirk's crew back to 1986 San Francisco to fetch a pair of humpbacks; few of the whales on screen were real, as the effects team built animatronic and motorised models.

Hawaii's humpback whale sanctuary has its education centre at Kihei, on which island?

Maui: Congress created the sanctuary in 1992 to protect the thousands of North Pacific humpbacks that gather in Hawaii's warm, shallow waters each winter to mate, give birth and raise their young.

Genetic studies show that whales such as the humpback are most closely related to which living land animal?

The hippopotamus: whales and hippos share an ancestor, though each line is thought to have taken to the water separately, which puts whales on the family tree beside cows and deer.

Up to roughly how much can an adult humpback whale weigh?

40 metric tons is about the upper limit, and to reach it a feeding humpback can swallow well over a ton of food a day through the summer.

How does the IUCN Red List classify the humpback whale as of 2018?

Least concern: hunting bans let humpbacks rebound so strongly that in 2016 the United States took nine of the 14 populations off its endangered list, though a few small groups are still at risk.

Which singer opened her first album with a sample of humpback whale song?

Kate Bush begins 'Moving', the first track of The Kick Inside, with whale song; she wrote it for her mime teacher, who she said 'opened up my eyes to the meanings of movement'.

The humpback songs that first made whales famous were taped by a US Navy engineer stationed on which island?

Bermuda: Frank Watlington picked up the eerie moans on underwater microphones there and gave his tapes to biologist Roger Payne, who found that the sounds repeated like songs.

What do the long grooves running down a humpback's throat let it do?

Balloon its mouth to gulp prey: the grooves stretch open as the whale lunges, so it can engulf a huge mouthful of water and food, then squeeze the water back out and swallow the catch.

Which novelist called the humpback 'the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales'?

Herman Melville: in Moby-Dick's catalogue of whales he praises the humpback's foam-churning play but notes that its oil 'is not very valuable', faint praise from a whaleman.