Description
Unlike other whales, a right whale has distinctive callosities (roughened patches of skin) on its head, along with a broad back without a dorsal fin, occasionally with white belly patches, and a long, arching rostrum, or upper jaw, that begins above the eye. The callosities appear white due to large colonies of cyamids (whale lice). Each individual has a unique callosities pattern. Right whales can grow up to 18 m (59 ft) long and weigh up to 100 short tons (91 t; 89 long tons), significantly larger than humpbacks or grays, but smaller than blues. An unusually large 40% of their body weight is blubber, which is of relatively low density. Consequently, unlike many other species of whale, dead right whales tend to float. Right whales swim slowly, reaching only 5 kn (9.3 km/h) at top speed. However are highly acrobatic and frequently breach (jump clear of the sea surface), tail-slap and lobtail.
Read more about this topic: Right Whale
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“He hath achieved a maid
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One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)