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Updated: June 12, 2025
The sperm or cachalot whale is a dangerous and bold fighter and is perhaps the most interesting of all cetaceans. His skin, like that of the porpoise, is as thin as gold-beaters' leaf. Underneath it is a coating of fine hair or fur, not attached to the skin, and then the blubber. He has enormous teeth or tushes in the lower jaw, but has no baleen.
The order Cetacea consists of three families, baleen whales, sperm whales, dolphins, and it's in this last group that narwhales are placed. Each of these families is divided into several genera, each genus into species, each species into varieties. So I was still missing variety, species, genus, and family, but no doubt I would complete my classifying with the aid of Heaven and Commander Farragut.
"But you must admit that certain cetaceans do grow to significant size, since they're said to supply as much as 120 metric tons of oil." "That I've seen," the Canadian said. "I can easily believe it, Ned, just as I can believe that certain baleen whales equal 100 elephants in bulk. Imagine the impact of such a mass if it were launched at full speed!"
From having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated WHALEBONE WHALES, that is, whales with baleen. Of these so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are little known.
Ned Land whistled "Yankee Doodle" between his teeth, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and turned his back on us. Meanwhile Captain Nemo studied the herd of cetaceans, then addressed me: "I was right to claim that baleen whales have enough natural enemies without counting man. These specimens will soon have to deal with mighty opponents.
In these several respects they resemble the plates of baleen in the mouth of a whale. But towards the extremity of the beak they differ much, as they project inward, instead of straight downward.
The Abraham Lincoln would change course and race after the animal sighted, only to find an ordinary baleen whale or a common sperm whale that soon disappeared amid a chorus of curses! However, the weather held good. Our voyage was proceeding under the most favorable conditions.
It took great "gulps" of sea water into its cavernous mouth, water which it strained out through its curtain of baleen, swallowing only the tiny fish down a gullet so small that it would not admit a man's fist.
The upper jaw was removed for its long plates of whalebone or baleen that valuable substance which alone makes it worth while nowadays to go after the MYSTICETUS, the price obtained for the oil being so low as to make it not worth while to fit out ships to go in search of it alone. "Trying-out" the blubber, with its accompaniments, is carried on precisely as with the sperm whale.
The huge mouth in these two whales has hanging from its sides within the lips a series of long bars or planks of wonderfully strong, elastic, horny substance the "baleen" or "whalebone" each plank being as much as eight or in rare cases twelve feet long.
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