Baleen

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Baleen

Baleen or whalebone is the means by which baleen whale

Baleen whale

The baleen whales, also called whalebone whales or great whales, form the Mysticeti, one of two suborders of the Cetacea . Baleen whales are characterized by having baleen plates for filtering food from water, rather than having teeth....
s feed. These whales do not have teeth, but instead have rows of baleen plates in the upper jaw

Jaw

The jaw is either of the two opposable structures forming, or near the entrance to the mouth.The term jaws is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serving to open and close it and is part of the body plan of most animals....
– flat, flexible plates with frayed edges, arranged in two parallel

Parallel (geometry)

Parallelism is a term in geometry and in everyday life that refers to a property in Euclidean space of two or more line s or plane , or a combination of these....
rows, looking like comb

Comb

A comb is a device made of solid material, generally flat, always toothed, and is used in hair care for straightening and cleaning hair or other fibers....
s of thick hair

Hair

Hair is a protein filament that epidermal growth from hair follicle deep within the dermis. The fine, soft hair found on many nonhuman mammals is typically called fur; wool is the characteristically curly hair found on sheep and goats....
. Baleen is not bone, but is composed of keratin

Keratin

Keratins are a family of fibrous protein; tough and insoluble, they form the hard but mineral structures found in reptiles, birds, amphibians and mammals....
, the same substance as hair, horn

Horn (anatomy)

A horn is a pointed projection of the skin on the head of various mammals, consisting of a covering of horn surrounding a core of living bone....
, claw

Claw

A claw is a curved, pointed appendage, found at the end of a toe or finger in most mammals, birds, and some reptiles. Somewhat similar fine hooked structures are found in arthropods such as beetles and spiders, at the end of the leg or Arthropod leg for gripping a surface as the creature walks....
s and nails

Nail (anatomy)

A nail is a horn -like structure at the end of an animal's finger or toe. See also claw....
.

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Encyclopedia

Baleen or whalebone is the means by which baleen whale

Baleen whale

Jaw

Parallel (geometry)

Parallelism is a term in geometry and in everyday life that refers to a property in Euclidean space of two or more line s or plane , or a combination of these....
rows, looking like comb

Comb

A comb is a device made of solid material, generally flat, always toothed, and is used in hair care for straightening and cleaning hair or other fibers....
s of thick hair

Hair

Keratin

Keratins are a family of fibrous protein; tough and insoluble, they form the hard but mineral structures found in reptiles, birds, amphibians and mammals....
, the same substance as hair, horn

Horn (anatomy)

A horn is a pointed projection of the skin on the head of various mammals, consisting of a covering of horn surrounding a core of living bone....
, claw

Claw

Nail (anatomy)

A nail is a horn -like structure at the end of an animal's finger or toe. See also claw....
. Whales use these combs for filter feeding. Whales are the only vertebrate group to use this method of feeding in great abundance (flamingos and crabeater seal

Crabeater Seal

The Crabeater Seal, Lobodon carcinophagus, is a little-known mammal. At a population of 8 to 50 million , it is perhaps the "second most numerous large species of mammal on Earth, after humans." More than one in every two Seal s in the world is a Crabeater Seal and the population biomass of Crabeaters is about four times that of all other...
s use similar methods, but do not have baleen), and it has allowed them to grow to immense sizes. The blue whale

Blue Whale

The Blue Whale is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales . At up to 32.9 metres in length and 172 metric tonnes or more in weight, it is the largest whale and the largest living animal and is believed to be the largest organism ever to have existed....
, the largest animal alive, is a baleen whale.

Depending on the species of whale, a baleen plate can be 0.5 to 3.5 m (2 to 12 ft) long, and weigh up to 90 kg (200 lb). Its hairy fringes are called baleen hair or whalebone-hair. Baleen plates are broader at the gumline (base). The plates have been compared to sieve

Sieve

In general, a sieve separates wanted/desired elements from unwanted material using a tool such as a mesh, net or other filtration or distillation methods, but it is also used for classification of powders by particle size, or for size measurement as an analytical technique....
s or Venetian blind

Window blind

A window blind is a specific type of window covering which is made with slats of fabric, wood or metal held in place with strings or fabric strips called tapes, if horizontal or metal or plastic tracks with carriers if vertical....
s.

The word "baleen" derives from Early Modern English

Early Modern English

Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English, although the King James Bible intentionally keeps some archaisms that were not comm...
word meaning "whale

Whale

Whales are marine mammals of order Cetacea which are neither dolphinsmembers, in other words, of the families Oceanic dolphin or River dolphinnor porpoises....
". This in turn derives from the Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
balaena, related to the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
phallaina – both of these also mean "whale".

Evolution of baleen

The oldest true fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
s of baleen are only 15 million years old, but baleen rarely fossilizes, and scientists believe it originated considerably earlier than that. This is indicated by skull modifications which are associated with baleen (such as a buttress of bone found beneath the eyes in the upper jaw, and loose lower jaw bones at the chin), being found in fossils from considerably earlier. Currently, baleen is believed to have evolved around thirty million years ago, possibly from a creature with a hard, gummy upper jaw, similar to that found on Dall's porpoise

Dall's Porpoise

Dall's Porpoise is a species of porpoise that came to worldwide attention in the 1970s. It was disclosed for the first time to the public that salmon fishing trawls were killing thousands of Dall's Porpoise and other cetaceans each year by accidentally capturing them in their nets....
today, which are, at a microscopic level, almost identical to baleen.

Curiously, many early baleen whales also had teeth, but these were likely used only peripherally, or perhaps not at all (again, similar to Dall's porpoise, which catches squid and fish by gripping them against its hard upper jaw).

Baleen in filter feeding

A whale's baleen plates play the most important role in its filter feeding process. In order to feed, a baleen whale opens its mouth widely and scoops in dense shoals of prey (such as krill

Krill

Krill are a type of shrimp-like marine invertebrate animal. These small crustaceans are important organisms of the zooplankton, particularly as food for baleen whales, manta rays, whale sharks, crabeater seals, and other pinniped, and a few seabird species that feed almost exclusively on them....
(euphausiids), copepod

Copepod

Copepods are a group of small crustaceans found in the sea and nearly every fresh water habitat . Many species are planktonic , but more are benthos , and some continental species may live in limno-terrestrial habitats and other wet terrestrial places, such as swamps, under leaf fall in wet forests, bogs, springs, ephemeral ponds and puddle...
s or small fish

Fish

A fish is any marine biology vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scale , and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins....
), together with large volumes of water. It then partly shuts its mouth and presses its tongue against its upper jaw, forcing the water to pass out sideways through the baleen, thus sieving out the prey which is then swallowed.

Uses of baleen

Whalebone was formerly used in buggy whips and parasol ribs, and to stiffen parts of women's stays and dress

Dress

A Dress is a garment consisting of a skirt with an attached bodice or with a matching bodice giving the effect of a one-piece garment.Dress may also refer to:...
es, like corset

Corset

A corset is a garment worn to mold and shape the torso into a desired shape for aesthetic or medical purposes . Both men and women are known to wear corsets, though women are more common wearers....
s. It was commonly used to crease paper

Paper

Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
; its flexibility keeps it from damaging the paper. Its function now has been replaced by plastic

Plastic

Plastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic organic chemistry solid materials suitable for the manufacture of industrial products....
. It is also used in the cable-backed bow

Cable-backed bow

A cable-backed bow is a bow reinforced with a cable on the back. The cable is made from either animal, vegetable or synthetic fibers and is tightened to increase the strength of the bow....
.

Baleen is one of the marine materials used for making scrimshaw

Scrimshaw

Scrimshaw is the name given to handiwork created by whalings made from the byproducts of harvesting marine mammals. It is most commonly made out of the bones and tooth of Sperm Whales, the baleen of other whales, and the tusks of walruses....
carvings.

Baleen

Evolution of baleen

Baleen in filter feeding

Uses of baleen

See also

Further reading