Bowhead whale
The bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) is an Arctic baleen whale, a right whale with a large, bow-shaped head that is up to 40% of its body length. The arched mouth is up to 10 feet (3 m) wide and 20 feet (6 m) deep. The eyes are very small and lips are huge. Bowheads live in pods, are rich in blubber (a subcutaneous layer 20-inch (50 cm) thick in places), and have 2 blowholes.
| Balaena, Balaena mysticetus Temporal range: Earliest Pleistocene-Present
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| Genus: | Balaena
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| Species: | B. mysticetus
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| Balaena mysticetus | |
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Bowhead Whale Media
Skeleton of a bowhead whale
Stamp showing drawing of mother and calf from Faroe Islands
Resting on water surface in Foxe Basin
Breaching off Alaskan coast
Drawing of an adult in 1884
Whale spyhops in Ulbansky Bay, northwestern Okhotsk Sea
Eighteenth-century engraving showing Dutch whalers hunting bowhead whales in the Arctic
The Chase of the Bowhead Whale (1909) by Clifford Warren Ashley
Inuit man and child standing on bowhead whale after a 2002 subsistence hunt
Whales swimming in the Lindholm Strait of the Shantar Islands, in the northwestern Sea of Okhotsk
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References
- ↑ {{{assessors}}} (2008). Balaena mysticetus. 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2008. Retrieved on {{{downloaded}}}.
Other websites
Media related to Bowhead whale at Wikimedia Commons
Data related to Balaena mysticetus at Wikispecies