Description
The bowhead whale has a robust, dark-colored body, no dorsal fin and a strongly bowed lower jaw and narrow upper jaw. Its baleen, the longest of any whale at 3 m (9.8 ft), strains tiny prey from the water. The whale has a massive bony skull which it uses to break through the Arctic ice to breathe. Inuit hunters have reported them surfacing through 60 cm (24 in) of ice. The bowhead may grow up to 14–18 m (46–59 ft) and weigh from 30,000 to 60,000 kg (66,000 to 130,000 lb) in adulthood. It is of comparable size to the three species of right whale. The largest bowhead yet reported was 21.2 m (70 ft) for a giant caught off Spitsbergen, Norway. This specimen was later estimated to have weighed approximately 133 t (290,000 lb). Females are larger than males. Its blubber is the thickest of any animal, averaging 43–50 cm (17–20 in).
Arctic bowhead whales have lost a significant portion of their genetic diversity in the past 500 years. Hundreds of DNA samples from living whales and from baleen used in vessels, toys and housing material. Bowheads crossed ice-covered inlets and straits to exchange genes between Atlantic and Pacific populations. This conclusion derived from analyzing maternal lineage using mitochondrial DNA, most likely because of whaling and climatic cooling between the 16th and 19th centuries — known as the Little Ice Age — which reduced the whales’ summer habitat.
Read more about this topic: Bowhead Whale
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)