Baleen Whale
There are eleven different species of the baleen whale, which are divided into four families. The Family Eschrichtiidae consists of only the Gray Whale. The Family Balaenopoteridae includes the Humpback, Blue, Sei, Fin, Minke, and Bryde’s Whales. All of these whales are sometimes call Rorquals. The Family Balaenidae is made up of the Bowhead, the Southern Right and the Northern Right Whales. The fourth and final one is the Family Neobalaenidae, which includes only a single whale, the Pygmy Right Whale.
The baleen whale, like other whales, has a blowhole for breathing, flippers for steering, and their tail propels them through the water by moving up and down. A baleen whale does not have a vocal cord like toothed whales, but they still can make several sounds, including what sounds like belching and moaning. The Humpback Whale is known for singing songs that can last up to half an hour.
Every baleen whale is a filter feeder, and instead of teeth, they have baleen plates. These plates are very hard. They are made of a substance called keratin, which is the same material found in human fingernails and hair. They wear down and then grow back again like fingernails. One side of the baleen plate has large bristles of different thicknesses. When a baleen whale feeds, all of the plankton, krill, and small fish get caught in the bristles. Whales literally have hundreds of baleen plates, and in some, such as the Humpback Whale, one of these plates can be twenty-five inches long, over a foot wide and .2 inches thick.
A baleen whale normally eats four percent of its body weight in food every day. For a whale that weighs up to a hundred tons, this can amount to a lot of food passing through the baleen plates. The many species of baleens eat differing prey, and they catch the prey in different ways. For example, the Right Whales are skimmers. They open up their mouths and then skim along the surface of the water, taking in plankton.
The group of whales known as Rorquals take large gulps, keep the food inside and filter out the water. They have special throat grooves that expand so wide that they can gulp in around eighteen thousand gallons of water at one time. With each gulp they keep in around thirty pounds of krill. A third method of feeding is used by the Gray Whale. The Gray Whale swims on the ocean bottom, and then sucks up mud and dirt. They filter the mud and water through their baleen plates and keep all the tiny crustaceans for food. They can suck in with so much power that they can leave craters on the ocean floor. Gray
Whales can spend as much as twenty hours eating every day.