Baleen Whales

A young Minke Whale showing it's baleen and throat grooves.

 Otherwise known as the Mysticeti suborder group of the Whale family system, these animals include the largest species that have ever lived. This of course includes the mighty Blue Whale,Fin,Sei,Northern Right and Minke Whales. Although all of these Irish species look somewhat different, they all share the same body plan, just altered to maximise the animals efficiency at sea.
 These animals adapted to return to the sea rather than live on land like the majority of species choose to do after spending Milena undersea, the Cetacean family did this to take advantage of the plentiful supply of food found in the oceans.
 In doing so these animals underwent extreme physical changes, most notable the loss of their hind legs which are now only recognisable as minute twig like vestigial bones found around the back half of the animals stuck in place by a mass of flesh. Cetaceans also manoeuvred their nostrils to the top of their heads to improve efficiency while at the surface to intake more air. These animals also became extremely streamlined in the form of a more pointed head, hairless body and horizontal tail fluke (unlike a fishes vertical tail).
 Now with all these changes to a once land animal did result in the split of the Cetacean family between baleen Whales and the more common toothed Whales that I will go into more detail at a later date.
 So baleen Whales have all of the above features except for the following: baleen (or whalebone as the whalers referred to it as), throat grooves (not found on the North Atlantic Right Whale due to this animals massive mouth and feeding strategy which made such an adaptation redundant) and a double blowhole.

Inward bristles of baleen

Baleen is a unique feeding adaptation only found in the Mysticeti suborder of the Cetacean family group. It comprises of Keratin which is then made up of protein. It is the exact same as our own finger nails and hair, it's just a combination of the two!. It is a very flexible substance while living but once disconnected from a Whale it becomes rigid and begins to taper inwards. A single Whale can have hundreds of these baleen plates, they are only found on the roof of the animals mouth and are triangular in shape when seen from the side.
 It was known to whalers as 'Whalebone' as it is only derived from these animals. Baleen truly was the plastic of it's day, the most acknowledged use of it was in the creation of corsets in the fashion industry!, but baleen also had a niche in the production of brushes, to stiffen silk fabrics and even in judges wigs to name a few.

Outside view of baleen

Baleen works on a very simple premises, to ensure that virtually no prey items escape the clutches of a Whales massive mouths. It works synchrony with the Whales throat grooves, when the animal opens it's mouth just before swimming through a school of it's prey, it's throat grooves expand to accommodate a higher water intake thus engulfing more prey. Upon closing it's mouth the Whale then uses it's tongue to push all of the seawater it has taken in. This forces it's prey into the inward facing bristles of it's baleen while allowing the sea water to escape and this simple syphoning system has allowed Whales to grow to the enormous sizes they are today... all fuelled by unsuspecting prey that alone would barely support ourselves let alone a Whale! but due to such a large intake of these animals using an efficient system there really was no size limit in these animals weightless world.

Fin and Minke Whale baleen plate comparison