Humpback Whale
Megaptera novaeangliae
Least ConcernFast Facts
About
The humpback whale is one of the ocean's great acrobats, a giant baleen whale famed for its enormous wing-like flippers, its spectacular breaching leaps and the haunting songs of the males. It undertakes some of the longest migrations of any mammal.
In place of teeth it has plates of baleen, which it uses to filter tiny krill and small fish from huge mouthfuls of seawater.
Behaviour
Humpbacks employ an ingenious cooperative technique called 'bubble-net feeding', in which a group blows a spiralling curtain of bubbles to concentrate fish before lunging up through the middle with mouths agape.
Male humpbacks produce long, complex and ever-changing songs that can last for hours and travel great distances through the water.
Did you know?
- Male humpbacks sing long, evolving songs that whole populations gradually adopt
- They trap fish inside spiralling 'nets' of bubbles they blow themselves
- Their flippers are the longest of any whale, up to a third of the body length
- Humpbacks migrate up to 8,000 kilometres between feeding and breeding grounds
Distribution
All the world's major oceans, migrating between polar feeding and tropical breeding grounds
