50 Fun Facts About Whales

Which whale species is considered the largest animal on Earth?

The blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever existed, with a maximum confirmed length of about 30 metres (100 feet) and a weight of up to 190-200 tonnes. A few sauropods and ancient marine reptiles may have rivalled it, but those estimates rest on fragmentary remains.

What is the primary food source for blue whales?

They capture it by lunge feeding, charging into a swarm with their mouths open as wide as 80 degrees.

What is the most common collective noun for a group of whales?

A pod usually holds ten to fifty animals, but when food is abundant or during mating season, groups can swell past a thousand.

Through which specialized opening on top of their heads do whales breathe?

Whales, being mammals, breathe air using lungs, and do so through one or two blowholes located on the top of their heads, allowing them to surface quickly for air.

Whales rely mainly on what to communicate, find their way and hunt across the ocean?

Sound carries long distances underwater, and whales use clicks for echolocation, whistles, pulsed calls and complex songs to communicate, navigate and hunt.

How old was the oldest recorded living humpback whale?

Humpbacks routinely live past 50, and researchers estimate age from the ear-wax plugs that build up in annual layers, much like tree rings.

What is the primary food source for sperm whales?

Sperm whales dive 300 to 800 metres and sometimes over a kilometre in search of prey, and undigested squid beaks pile up in their stomachs, with as many as 18,000 found in one specimen.

Which whale species is recognized as the largest toothed whale?

The sperm whale is the largest of all toothed whales, notable for its massive head and deep-diving capabilities.

What is the typical gestation period for a blue whale?

Calves are already 6 to 7 metres long and weigh 2 to 3 tonnes at birth.

Which whale species has the longest lifespan of any mammal, potentially over 200 years?

Bowhead whales are considered the longest-living mammals, surviving well past 200 years; one male was estimated at 211 years old. A bowhead found in 2007 carried a harpoon point dating from the 1880s.

After the blue whale, which species is considered the second-largest whale in the world?

The fin whale is the second-longest cetacean after the blue whale. The largest individuals reported measured 26-27.3 metres (85-90 feet), with a record length of 27.3 m - immense, but still short of the blue whale.

Which land animal is the closest living relative of whales and dolphins?

They share a semi-aquatic ancestor from about 54 million years ago; whales descend from even-toed ungulates.

The stranded blue whale heart weighed for the record books tipped the scales at roughly how much?

Its heart rate can fall to 2 beats per minute on deep dives and climb to about 37 on surfacing.

The humpback's genus name Megaptera means what in Greek, referring to its huge front flippers?

Males sing complex songs lasting 4 to 33 minutes and the species uses bubbles to corral prey.

How does a sperm whale's brain, the largest of any animal, compare with a human's?

Mature males' brains average 7.8 kg; the whale can dive to 2,250 metres, third deepest of any mammal.

The orca, or killer whale, is actually the largest member of which family?

The oceanic dolphins count the orca as their biggest member; it is the only living species in the genus Orcinus and one of 35 in a family that appeared about 11 million years ago.

The beluga is nicknamed the 'sea canary' because of what?

It has no dorsal fin, which lets it swim easily beneath Arctic ice, and a large deformable melon for echolocation.

The narwhal's spiralled tusk, up to 3 metres long, is actually what kind of tooth?

Its scientific name Monodon monoceros means 'single-tooth single-horn'; it shares the family Monodontidae only with the beluga.

The bowhead whale is named after its massive triangular skull, which it uses to do what?

It is the only baleen whale endemic to Arctic waters and has the longest baleen plates of any whale, up to 5.2 metres.

The rough white patches of keratinised skin on a right whale's head are called what?

They are present before birth and host colonies of whale lice; fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales survive.

Why were right whales the 'right' whales for early whalers to hunt?

Their high blubber content also gave rich oil yields; today ship strikes and gear entanglement cause nearly half their deaths.

Roughly how many living cetacean species are there?

They split into 75 toothed species and the baleen whales; only the toothed group can echolocate.

The earliest documented organised whaling industry, from 1026, belonged to which people?

They dominated the trade for five centuries and ranged across the North Atlantic.

The International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling took effect in which year?

Agreed in 1982 as a five-year pause, it still stands; Iceland, Japan and Norway continue commercial hunts.

Which country left the International Whaling Commission and resumed commercial whaling in July 2019?

It argued the IWC had failed its duty to promote sustainable hunting; it stopped its Antarctic 'scientific' whaling at the same time.

Melville's white whale was modelled on which real, notoriously elusive albino sperm whale?

The novel's ending drew on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820; it was first published as The Whale in London in 1851.

According to author Christopher Kemp, roughly what share of sperm whales produce ambergris?

Giant squid beaks found inside lumps suggest it eases the passage of sharp objects; it can float for years before washing ashore.

The spermaceti organ in a sperm whale's head can hold up to how much of the waxy substance?

Whalers extracted it for candles and cosmetics from the 17th century; its function may involve buoyancy or focusing echolocation.

Which researchers released the 1970 album Songs of the Humpback Whale?

Judy Collins and George Crumb soon wove the recordings into their own music.

A cetacean carcass that sinks to the deep sea floor and feeds an ecosystem for decades is called what?

They were first observed in the late 1970s using deep-sea robots and are hotspots for specialised bone-eating fauna.

Pakicetus, the most basal known whale, was a wolf-like animal whose fossils were found in which country?

About 1 to 2 metres long, it lived around water some 48 million years ago and swam by flexing its spine like an otter.

The extinct whale Basilosaurus got its name, meaning 'king lizard', because of what mistake?

Richard Owen later showed its two-rooted molars proved it was a mammal; it grew up to 20 metres with tiny hind limbs.

The mysterious 52-hertz call detected since 1989 earned its unidentified singer what nickname?

Detected since 1989, it calls at a frequency no other whale uses; Woods Hole scientists suspect a hybrid or malformed blue whale.

Migaloo, the famous all-white humpback protected by special laws in Queensland, was shown to be what?

His singing, first recorded in 1998, told scientists he was male; a 500-metre no-approach zone surrounds him.

The vaquita, the smallest and most endangered cetacean, lives only in which body of water?

Its Spanish name means 'little cow'; gillnets set illegally for totoaba have driven it to the brink.

The baleen plates that filter a whale's food, once sold as 'whalebone' for corsets, are made of which substance?

Keratin, the same substance as human fingernails, skin and hair, forms each bristle-like plate. Sold as 'whalebone', it stiffened corsets; the oldest true baleen fossils are only 15 million years old.

A 2014 study found which cetacean has more neocortical neurons than any other mammal, humans included?

Orcas have the second-largest brain mass of any living animal, after sperm whales.

Organised whale watching began in the 1950s at Cabrillo National Monument in which US city?

The first boat trips in 1955 charged $1; by 2008 an estimated 13 million people went whale watching worldwide.

In 1975 GM blamed corrosion in thousands of transmissions on removing which ingredient from its fluid two years earlier?

Sperm oil, mostly liquid wax, was valued for rust resistance; whale oil once lit 5,000 London street lamps in the 1740s.

Which environmental group launched its first anti-whaling campaign against Soviet whalers in 1975?

Sailing aboard the Phyllis Cormack, they took direct action off California on June 27; Sea Shepherd split off two years later.

Cuvier's beaked whale holds the mammal diving record, reaching what depth?

One dive lasted 222 minutes; the species is also linked to mass strandings triggered by mid-frequency naval sonar.

Minke whales are the smallest members of which family of baleen whales?

The family also includes the humpback, fin, sei, Bryde's and blue whales; the name may come from a whaler named Meincke.

Roughly how much air can a humpback whale's lungs hold?

The shape of the steamy spout exhaled from the blowhole differs by species, helping observers tell them apart at sea.

Why can whales not turn their heads?

The fused neck adds stability at high swimming speeds at the cost of flexibility.

Whale milk is so rich in fat that it is said to have the consistency of what?

The fat content speeds the calf's development of blubber; weaning typically happens at about 11 months.

What do toothed whales use to generate the high-frequency clicks of echolocation?

A sperm whale's head is filled mainly with this organ, while a beaked whale has just a small bulge on its skull.

Why is whale excrement, released at the ocean surface, important to fisheries?

Those nutrients fertilise plankton, which underpins the food chain that fisheries depend on.

In Thailand, fishermen call the Bryde's whale 'Pla pu', meaning what?

They do not hunt it; in neighbouring Vietnam beached whales are sometimes given funerals, a custom from the ancient Champa kingdom.

Bangudae petroglyphs from 7,000-3,500 BCE show whale-dependent people in which country?

About a third of the 300 animal carvings are whales, some detailed enough to show the throat pleats of rorquals.

How thick can the blubber of polar whale species get?

About 11 inches (28 cm) of blubber wraps polar species; besides insulation it provides buoyancy for a 100-ton animal and energy for fasting during migrations to the equator.