Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Cetacea > Balaenidae > Balaena > Balaena mysticetus

Balaena mysticetus (bowhead whale; Bowhead; black right whale)

Synonyms:
Language: French

Wikipedia Abstract

The bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) is a species of the family Balaenidae, in suborder Mysticeti, and genus Balaena, once thought to include the right whale. A stocky dark-colored whale without a dorsal fin, it can grow 14 to 18 m (46 to 59 ft) in length. This thick-bodied species can weigh from 75 to 100 tonnes (74 to 98 long tons; 83 to 110 short tons). They live entirely in fertile Arctic and sub-Arctic waters, unlike other whales that migrate to low latitude waters to feed or reproduce. The bowhead was also known as the Greenland right whale or Arctic whale. American whalemen called them the steeple-top, polar whale, or Russia or Russian whale. The bowhead has the largest mouth of any animal.
View Wikipedia Record: Balaena mysticetus

Infraspecies

Balaena mysticetus mysticetus
Balaena mysticetus pittekajensis
Balaena vulgaris groenlandica
Balaena vulgaris vulgaris

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
9
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
34
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 18.13
EDGE Score: 2.95
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Gestation [2]  1 year 1 month
Litter Size [2]  1
Litters / Year [2]  0.3
Maximum Longevity [2]  211 years
Migration [1]  Interoceanic
Snout to Vent Length [4]  45 feet (1359 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Coastal
Weaning [2]  1 year
Adult Weight [2]  110.232 tons (100,000.00 kg)
Birth Weight [2]  1,984.171 lbs (900.00 kg)
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates)
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  100 %
Forages - Marine [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  22 years 6 months
Male Maturity [2]  22 years 6 months

Protected Areas

Prey / Diet

Predators

Homo sapiens (man)[5]
Orcinus orca (Killer Whale)[5]

Providers

Parasite of 
Trichinella spiralis (pork worm)[5]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, 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
♦ 2de 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
♦ 3Hamish 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
♦ 4Nathan 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
♦ 5Jorrit 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.
♦ 6Gibson, 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