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Baleen whales include humpbacks, fin, sei, and bowhead species, and they have been found to have hair follicles – even if they don’t have visible hair. These follicles are found along the jawline, chin, and on top of the head, these whale species may have 30 to 100 hairs, writes the Blue Ocean Society. Whales and other cetaceans are mammals despite their watery lifestyle, and while it may seem unusual, they share certain characteristics unique across all mammals (let's not get into monotremes right now) regardless of habitat. Some whales and dolphin species have hair where land mammals have whiskers. In 1980, humpback whales were observed using a new feeding technique that added a slap of the tail at the surface. It turns out that the whales were switching from herring to the more populous sand lance, a fish species that was less affected by the bubble nets.
Hairlike Baleen
This group of baleen whales has small, hair-like whiskers on their muzzle, chin, and jawline. Not all individuals have these whiskers, which are connected to nerves and are thought to serve a sensory purpose. However, the long hair-like structures seen on their mouths are not hairs but baleen plates that filter water for food. Baleen whales are typically categorized as skimmers, gulpers, or suckers.
Life-span
Numerous nerves around the hair follicles suggest that the hairs may be used to sense something in their environment. Perhaps whales use their hairs to detect prey or changes in the water, similar to how whiskers work on some land mammals. As a marine mammal whales share several features that are common among “almost” all mammals such as the need to breathe air, giving birth to live young, producing milk to feed their babies and the presence of body hair. Bowhead whales spend their whole lives in icy-cold, food-rich Arctic waters. They are slow moving and slow growing whales and don’t reach sexual maturity until they are 20 to 25 years old.
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Cetaceans are ubiquitous in the ocean—they are found in shallow and deep water, cold and warm currents, from pole to pole, and the tropical latitudes in between. Many whales move to warm waters to mate and give birth in the winter, and then to colder waters in the summer where there is an abundance of food. These whales swim thousands of miles over several months, moving at around ten miles per hour, and even slower speeds when they are feeding. Dolphins and other toothed whales migrate as well, although their distances tend to be shorter than the larger baleen whales. Bryde’s (pronounced broodus) whales (Balaenoptera brydei) stay exclusively in warm tropical waters, and the extremely endangered vaquita can only be found in the northern part of the Gulf of California.
When present, the dorsal fin is helpful for stability and has no support in the way of bones. They have adapted to living in the water, and most of them lose their hair as they mature. This adaptation reduces friction and improves locomotion, but the precise molecular mechanisms underlying hair loss in cetaceans are still not completely understood. However, as whales evolved to become fully aquatic creatures, the hair became less useful and eventually became vestigial.
Some of the pods are residential, meaning they have a home territory, while other pods are transient and move from place to place as the seasons change. Resident whales predominantly eat salmon, while the transient groups eat seals, sea lions, porpoises, and other whales. Since the end of the Cretaceous period when large marine reptiles went extinct in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the oceans were absent of major predators (except for sharks). This left a large gap, allowing for mammals—including the earliest ocean-going whales in the Eocene—to evolve and take advantage of new opportunities, such as in the ocean, where food was abundant.
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The narwhal tusk is the only animal horn or tusk with such unique anatomy. The film Flipper, about an injured bottlenose dolphin, aired in 1963 and instantly became a classic, in addition to beginning a TV show. In 1993, the movie Free Willy, a story about the special bond between a young teenager and a charismatic, captive orca, captured young audiences and went on to become a successful series of movies.
The hairy fringe on the inside of the baleen plates earned these whales their scientific name “mysticete”, or moustached whales. Baleen is made out of keratin, the same protein that makes up our fingernails and hair. Being strong and flexible, baleen makes the perfect filter, or colander, enabling whales to strain out sea water and keep the prey. Blue whales, fin whales, bowhead whales, minke whales, sperm whales, and humpback whales all sing. The location of the hair follicles is similar to the whiskers in terrestrial mammals. They are found along the jawline on the upper and lower jaw, on the chin, along the midline on top of the head, and sometimes along the blowhole.
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Lowest Songs
After birth, these hairs fall out and do not regrow as the dolphins mature into adulthood. Sperm whales have huge heads – they account for up to a third of their overall body length. Most of the space inside their heads is taken up not by their brains but by a large cavity filled with yellowish fine oil called spermaceti. This oil was valuable to whalers who sold it for oil lamp fuel, to make candles, creams, and ointments. The sperm whale’s unique spermaceti organ plays an important role in echolocation (whale navigation and ability to ‘see with sound’).
Over time they have lost their vision altogether—with no lens it is thought they still use the eye to perceive light—and instead rely on echolocation to navigate and hunt for prey. Despite their need to come to the surface regularly to breathe, cetaceans are able to dive to significant depths. Orcas usually only dive for less than a minute to five minutes before surfacing again, but even so they are able to reach depths over 300 feet (or more than 100 meters). Sperm whales are able to dive for over an hour and to depths greater than 6,000 feet (or 1,828 meters).
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There are only about 100 individuals in the Rice's whale population, making the species a critically endangered species. The biggest threats to the species include vessel strikes, ocean noise, energy exploration, development and production, oil spills and responses, entanglement in fishing gear, and ocean debris. As the only baleen whale to live exclusively in American waters it has been nicknamed America's whale. A single right whale could yield 5,247 liters (1,386 gallons) of oil plus 293 kilograms (647 pounds) of baleen. In Norway and Iceland, whalers would corral whales into fjords and then block their exit with nets. Spears were dipped in blood from previous hunts so that the wounds would become infected and eventually kill the whale.
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