#Arctic scoop skin

Rorquals are specialized at lunge-feeding, and have a streamlined body to reduce drag while accelerating. Gray whales are specialized for feeding on bottom-dwelling crustaceans.

#Arctic scoop skin

They have a layer of fat, or blubber, under the skin to keep warm in the cold water.Īlthough baleen whales are widespread, most species prefer the colder waters of the Arctic and Antarctic. Some species are well adapted for diving to great depths. Baleen whales have fused neck vertebrae, and are unable to turn their heads at all. Baleen whales use their baleen plates to filter out food from the water by either lunge-feeding or skim-feeding. The fin whale is the fastest baleen whale, recorded swimming at 10 m/s (36 km/h 22 mph). Baleen whales can have streamlined or large bodies, depending on the feeding behavior, and two limbs that are modified into flippers.

Baleen whales split from toothed whales (Odontoceti) around 34 million years ago.īaleen whales range in size from the 6 m (20 ft) and 3,000 kg (6,600 lb) pygmy right whale to the 31 m (102 ft) and 190 t (210 short tons) blue whale, the largest known animal to have ever existed. While cetaceans were historically thought to have descended from mesonychids, molecular evidence instead supports them as a clade of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla). There are currently 16 species of baleen whales. Mysticeti comprises the families Balaenidae ( right and bowhead whales), Balaenopteridae ( rorquals and the gray whale), and Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale). Baleen whales ( systematic name Mysticeti), also known as whalebone whales, are a parvorder of carnivorous marine mammals of the infraorder Cetacea ( whales, dolphins and porpoises) which use keratinaceous baleen plates (or 'whalebone') in their mouths to sieve planktonic creatures from the water.