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While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
humpback whale, (Megaptera novaeangliae), abaleen whaleknown for itselaboratecourtship songs and displays. Humpbacks usually range from 12 to 16 metres (39 to 52 feet) in length and weigh approximately 36 metric tons (40 short [U.S.] tons). The body is black on the upper surface, with a variable amount of white below, and it has about 30 broad ventral grooves on the throat and chest. Thiscetaceanis distinguished from otherbaleenwhales by its long, narrow flippers, which are about a third as long as the body and scalloped on the forward edge. Humpbacks also have large knobs on the head, jaws, and body, each knob being associated with one or two hairs. The dorsal fin is small and set far back on the body.
Humpback whales live along the coasts of all oceans, occasionally swimming close to shore, even into harbours and rivers. Theyundertakelong migrations between polar feeding grounds in summer and tropical or subtropical breeding grounds in winter. Diet consists of shrimplike crustaceans calledkrill, smallfish, and plankton, which the humpbackwhalestrains out of the water with its baleen. Humpbacks use a unique method of feeding calledbubblenetting, in which bubbles are exhaled as the whale swims in a spiral below a patch of water dense with food. The curtain of bubbles confines the prey to a small area in the middle of which one or more whales surface.
The mostvocalof all whales, humpbacks make a great variety of sounds, from moans and cries to groans and snores. The whales string these together to form “songs” lasting 5–35 minutes. The songs vary among groups of whales in different regions and undergo gradual but distinctive changes from year to year.
The humpback is also one of the most acrobatic cetaceans. It frequentlybreachesby leaping belly-up completely clear of the water, then arching backward and returning to the surface with a loud slapping sound. When beginning a deep dive, theanimalhunches its back and rolls steeply forward, bringing its tail out of the water and perpendicular to theoceansurface.
The humpback whale was at one time commercially valuable and was greatly reduced in numbers byoverhuntingin the early and mid-20th century. It has been protectedworldwidefrom commercialwhalingsince the mid-1960s, and many populations have increased. These population increases have prompted theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN) to change the status of the humpback whale from endangered tovulnerable.
Although the humpback is the only species in thegenusMegaptera, it is related to otherrorqualsof the family Balaenopteridae, including theblue whale,fin whale, andsei whale. The latter portion of the humpback’s species name is a Latin reference to theNew Englandcolonies, where it was first scientifically described.
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