Minke whales | |
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Dwarf minke whale | |
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Size compared to an average human | |
Scientific 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]
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)