Blainville's Beaked Whale

• Its jaw contains the densest bone known in the animal kingdom, hence the epithet densirostris, meaning dense-beaked.
• Dives of more than 1,400 metres deep and lasting almost an hour have been recorded for it.
• Its jaw contains the densest bone in the animal kingdom. Blainville described it in 1817 from a nine-inch piece of rostrum, the heaviest bone he had ever handled, hence the name densirostris.
• It is an extreme diver: dives of up to 1,400 m and more than 54 minutes have been recorded.
• After those dives it spends long periods in the surface layer, which is interpreted as a necessary recovery after pushing its physiology to the limit.
• Only adult males have two visible teeth, which jut from the lower jaw like tusks and are used in fights between males. The linear scars on the body betray those battles.
• It is the beaked whale of the genus Mesoplodon with the widest distribution, and the population off the north-east Bahamas has been photo-identified since 2002, making it the best known.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (mammal)

Habitat and environment

Deep temperate and tropical oceanic waters, over submarine canyons and slopes

Size at birth

From 1.9 to 2.6 m long

Sexual maturity

9 years

Gestation / incubation

12 months

Litter / clutch size

1

Sources consulted: IUCN Red List · Animal Diversity Web · Wikipedia (es)