Minke whale

Minke whales
Dwarf minke whale
Dwarf minke whale
Size compared to an average human
Size compared to an average human
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Infraorder: Cetacea
Family: Balaenopteridae
Genus: Balaenoptera
Species complex: minke whale species complex
Species

The minke whale (/ˈmɪnki/), or lesser rorqual, is a species complex of baleen whale.[1] The two species of minke whale are the common (or northern) minke whale and the Antarctic (or southern) minke whale.[2] The minke whale was first described by the Danish naturalist Otto Fabricius in 1780, who assumed it must be an already known species and assigned his specimen to Balaena rostrata, a name given to the northern bottlenose whale by Otto Friedrich Müller in 1776.[3] In 1804, Bernard Germain de Lacépède described a juvenile specimen of Balaenoptera acuto-rostrata.[4] The name is a partial translation of Norwegian minkehval, possibly after a Norwegian whaler named Meincke, who mistook a northern minke whale for a blue whale.[5]

  1. ^ Malde, Ketil; Seliussen, Bjørghild B.; Quintela, María; Dahle, Geir; Besnier, Francois; Skaug, Hans J.; Øien, Nils; Solvang, Hiroko K.; Haug, Tore; Skern-Mauritzen, Rasmus; Kanda, Naohisa; Pastene, Luis A.; Jonassen, Inge; Glover, Kevin A. (13 January 2017). "Whole genome resequencing reveals diagnostic markers for investigating global migration and hybridization between minke whale species". BMC Genomics. 18 (1): 76. doi:10.1186/s12864-016-3416-5. ISSN 1471-2164. OCLC 7310574704. PMC 5237217. PMID 28086785.
  2. ^ Arnason, U., Gullberg A. & Widegren, B. (1993). "Cetacean mitochondrial DNA control region: sequences of all extant baleen whales and two sperm whale species". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 10 (5): 960–970. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a040061. PMID 8412655.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ World Register of Marine Species, accessed 30 May 2017. Balaena rostrata Müller, 1776, accepted name Hyperoodon ampullatus (Forster, 1770).
  4. ^ Lacepède, Histoire naturelle des cétacées. (Paris, 1804).
  5. ^ "Dictionary.com". Retrieved 2018-05-16.