Humpback whale

Humpback whale

Humpbacks can easily be identified by their stocky body, obvious hump, black dorsal coloring and elongated pectoral fins. The species was once hunted to the brink of extinction; its population fell by an estimated 90% before a 1966 moratorium. While stocks have partially recovered to some 80,000 animals worldwide, entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships and noise pollution continue to affect the species.

About Humpback whale in brief

Summary Humpback whaleThe humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. It is one of the larger rorqual species, with adults ranging in length from 12–16m and weighing around 25–30 metric tons. The species was once hunted to the brink of extinction; its population fell by an estimated 90% before a 1966 moratorium. While stocks have partially recovered to some 80,000 animals worldwide, entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships and noise pollution continue to affect the species. Humpbacks can easily be identified by their stocky body, obvious hump, black dorsal coloring and elongated pectoral fins. The common name is derived from the curving of their backs when diving. Genetic research in mid-2014 by the British Antarctic Survey confirmed that the separate populations in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Southern Oceans are more distinct than previously thought. The female has a hemispherical lobe about 15cm in diameter in her genital region. The male’s remains usually hidden in the genital region, usually in the slit behind the hinge behind the back, behind the umbilicus. The head and lower jaw are covered with knobs called knobs, which are characteristic of the species, and typically rise above the surface. The fluked tail, typically when diving, has wavy trailing edges. The plates on each side of their mouths measure from 18 ft in front to about 3ft in the front in front of the front. The males have 270 to 400 darkly colored baleens in their mouths.

This visually distinguishes males and females, and males usually grown in females. The females are fairly wide but fairly thick, but are fairly fairly wide in males, but fairly thin in females, but the males are fairly thick in males. The humpback was first identified as baleine de la Nouvelle Angleterre by Mathurin Jacques Brisson in his Regnum Animale of 1756. In 1781, Georg Heinrich Borowski described the species as Balaena novaeangliae. In 1804, Lacépède shifted the humpback from the family Balaenidae, renaming it B. jubartes. The generic name Megaptera refers to their large front flippers. The specific name means ‘New Englander’ and was probably given by Brisson due to regular sightings of humpbacks off the coast of New England. It was originally classified as Meg adaptera longipinna in 1846, but in 1932, Remington Kellogg reverted the species names to use Borowski’s novaeangsiae. It has a diverse repertoire of feeding methods, including the bubble net technique. The rorquals are believed to have diverged from the other families of the suborder Mysticeti as long ago as the middle Miocene era. However, it is not known when the members of these families divergent from each other. Recent DNA sequencing has indicated the humpbacks is actually more closely related to certain rorQuals, particularly the fin whale and possibly the gray.