ANIMALSLARGEST
TOOTHED MAMMAL
Mature male sperm
whales (Physeter
macrocephalus, right)
can grow to 20.5 m
(67 ft 3 in) long, but
average 16 m (52 ft
5 in). The species
only has functional
teeth in the lower
jaw (there are 18 to
26 on each side) and
they fit into slots in
the upper jaw. Each
lower-jaw tooth can
weigh 1 kg (2 lb 3 oz).LARGEST JAW
The Natural History Museum in London, UK, owns a 5-m-long (16-ft
4.8-in) jaw from a sperm whale, or cachalot. That’s almost the same as
the length of five baseball bats laid end to end. The massive lower jaw
belonged to a male whale that had been nearly 25.6 m (84 ft) long.Social groups of whales are called podsA sperm
whale’s upper
teeth do not emerge
on its upper jaw. Indeed,
these creatures often
simply swallow their food,
without biting. Sperm
whales with no teeth
at all are still able
to^ survive.North Pacific, it attains a maximum confirmed
length of 13 m (42 ft 7.8 in) and weighs up to
14 tonnes (30,864 lb).
The smallest species of beaked whale is the
pygmy or Peruvian beaked whale (Mesoplodon
peruvianus). It measures some 4 m (13 ft) long
when adult and is around 1.6 m (5 ft 3 in) long
when newborn. It has been recorded in eastern
tropical Pacific waters stretching south from
California in the USA and Baja California in
Mexico to Peru and Chile in north-western
South America.
As of Oct 2016, the newest species of
beaked whale was a recently recognized
species from Japan, known colloquially by
local Japanese fishermen as the karasu but
still awaiting formal scientific description and
naming. Much smaller and darker in colour than
its closest relatives, the giant beaked whales
(genus Berardius), the karasu inhabits shallow
waters off Japan and the Korean Peninsula
and also in the Bering Sea off Alaska.
The deepest dive by a mammal was made
by a Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris)
off the coast of southern California, USA, in- During a three-month study of eight
individuals, marine scientists used satellite-
linked tags to record the whales’ dives, the
deepest of which reached 2,992 m (9,816 ft)
- equivalent to more than three-and-a-half
times the height of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s
tallest building (see pp.36–37).
Shepherd’s beaked whale (Tasmacetus
shepherdi) has been recorded off New Zealand,
Australia and Argentina. With as many as 27
pairs of functional teeth in each jaw, plus a
pair of short tusks at the tip of the lower jaw
in males, it has the most teeth for a beaked
whale species. All other beaked whales
possess only a handful
of teeth at most. Indeed,
the paucity of teeth is a
characteristic feature
of these whales.
LARGEST TAIL
In absolute terms, the tail of the humpback
whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is the largest
in the animal kingdom. Comprising two lobes (or
“flukes”), a fully grown tail is as wide as a giraffe
is tall, with one measured specimen reaching
17 ft 4 in (5.28 m), according to research by
Nancy Stevick of WhaleNet.org.In the past, the
tusk of the narwhal
was thought to
be the horn of the
fabled unicornLARGEST MAMMAL TO EXPLODE
In 2004, a bull sperm whale 17 m (55 ft 9 in) long
and weighing 50 tonnes (110,230 lb) died after
becoming beached in south-west Chinese Taipei.
It was placed on the back of a truck and taken
away (below), but as the carcass decomposed,
powerful internal gases gathered within it. On
26 Jan, the deceased cetacean exploded while
the truck was driving through the city of Tainan,
splattering nearby shop fronts, vehicles and
pedestrians with blood and entrails (above).