Whale Characteristics

Rorquals

• The body type of rorqual whales is slender and streamlined. These are among the largest creatures who've ever lived -- the blue whale, who can reach 100 feet in length and weigh 196 tons, is a rorqual whale. Most of them have a dorsal fin and two paired blowholes. They have ventral grooves from their chest to their belly that expand when they take in water as they feed. The humpback whale is not as streamlined as the blue whale but is considered a rorqual because of these grooves.

Right Whales

• Right whales, which include the right and bowhead whale, also have baleen, but they are very robust, don't have the furrows in the neck and chest or a dorsal fin, and their heads have a more arched profile. The bowhead whale is named specifically because of the high arch of its jaws.

Gray Whale

• The gray whale is the only species in its family, eschrichtidae. Its baleen is shorter than other baleen whales and, instead of a dorsal fin, it has bumps where the dorsal fin should be. It has ventral furrows but not many. The gray whale migrates great distances. In the Bering sea they come to feed, and in the waters off Mexico they come to mate and bear young.

Baleen

• The rorquals, gray and right whales don't have teeth, but instead have horny plates called baleen that hang down from the upper jaw. They use these plates to strain food from the water. One of the reasons that whales were hunted so extensively was the baleen plates were used to make corsets for women.

Sperm Whale

• One quarter to one third of the sperm whale's 69-foot length is taken up by its head. Its blunt squarish snout projects far beyond the lower jaw, which has rows of teeth on each side. It has a dorsal hump and bumps instead of a fin. It has a single blowhole to the left of its midline and near the front of the head. The spout is small, bushy and puffs out at a sharp angle.