Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Cetacea > Eschrichtiidae > Eschrichtius > Eschrichtius robustus

Eschrichtius robustus (Gray Whale; Western Gray Whale)

Synonyms:
Language: Spanish

Wikipedia Abstract

The gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus), also known as the grey whale, gray back whale, Pacific gray whale, or California gray whale is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and breeding grounds yearly. It reaches a length of 14.9 meters (49 ft), a weight of 36 tonnes (40 short tons), and lives between 55 and 70 years. The common name of the whale comes from the gray patches and white mottling on its dark skin. Gray whales were once called devil fish because of their fighting behavior when hunted. The gray whale is the sole living species in the genus Eschrichtius, which in turn is the sole living genus in the family Eschrichtiidae. This mammal descended from filter-feeding whales that appeared at the beginning of the Oligocene, over 30 million years ago.
View Wikipedia Record: Eschrichtius robustus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
11
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
37
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 22.87
EDGE Score: 3.17
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  31.416 tons (28,500.00 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  1,102.317 lbs (500.00 kg)
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [2]  10 %
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  90 %
Forages - Marine [2]  100 %
Emoji [3]  spouting whale
Gestation [1]  1 year 1 month
Litter Size [1]  1
Litters / Year [1]  1
Maximum Longevity [1]  77 years
Migration [4]  Interoceanic
Snout to Vent Length [5]  45 feet (1370 cm)
Weaning [1]  6 months
Female Maturity [1]  8 years
Male Maturity [1]  8 years

Protected Areas

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Homo sapiens (man)[7]
Orcinus orca (Killer Whale)[7]
Somniosus pacificus (Pacific Sleeper Shark)[7]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Emoji by Twitter is licensed under CC BY 4.0
♦ 4Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 5Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 6THE FOOD DIET CONTENT OF THE GRAY WHALE ESCHRICHTIUS ROBUSTUS IN MECHIGMENSKY BAY, WESTERN BERING SEA, Lyudmila L. Budnikova, Sergey A. Blokhin, Dennis I. Litovka, Internal Whaling Commission, SC65a Meeting, BRG13, 2013
♦ 7Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 8Food Web Relationships of Northern Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca : a Synthesis of the Available Knowledge, Charles A. Simenstad, Bruce S. Miller, Carl F. Nyblade, Kathleen Thornburgh, and Lewis J. Bledsoe, EPA-600 7-29-259 September 1979
♦ 9Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0