Friday 19 January 2007
Fin whale
The
Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus) is a Baleen whale and is the second largest whale and also the second largest animal currently living in the world. The
blue whale is the largest. The Fin whale can grow up to 26 meters in length. There are two groups of Fin Whales in the world, north and south. The two groups do not interbreed and never meet. Species from the Southern group can become larger (up to 26 meters) than the Northern group (21 - 23 meters). Can you guess the weight of a 26 meter long Fin whale? Its weight is around 120,000 kilograms! Apart from its gigantic size it is distinguishable by a white patch on its right jaw (not the left) as you can see from
this picture. In the early days of whaling, the Fin whale was too fast for the whalers to catch them. This changed with the coming of steam-powered boats. The Fin whale soon became the most hunted Cetacean of the world (at its peak there were 30,000 killed annually) and is listed as endangered now (now they are only hunted by humans on the coast of Greenland, killing about 10 Fin whales a year).
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