296 WHALES AND DOLPHINS 



and the posterior border concave ; it is situated very slightly 

 in front of the middle of the back. The flippers are tapering, 

 not rounded as in Orcinus, and are in length about one-tenth 

 of the body length. The proportion of the length of the flipper 

 to body length is a useful feature in distinguishing the False 

 Killer from the Pilot Whale, Globicephala melcena, with which 

 it has more than once been confused. The flipper of the Pilot 

 Whale is very long, narrow and tapering, about one-fifth of 

 the body length. 



The body colour of the False Killer is entirely black, relieved 

 occasionally by sparsely-scattered white star-shaped scar 

 marks similar to those found on the skin of Blue and Fin 

 Whales. 



The teeth are large and powerful, recalling those of the 

 Killer, but are circular in cross-section instead of oval as in 

 that animal. Eight to 11 pairs in upper and lower jaws is 

 the number commonly found, and at the gum they have a 

 diameter of \ inch to f inch. 



A length of 18 feet 6 inches may be reached by adults of 

 this species, the average length of males being two feet more 

 than that of females. 



Like the Killer the False Killer is a pelagic species, world- 

 wide in its distribution, with the probable exception of polar 

 seas, from which it has not as yet been recorded. 



For the original description of the False Killer we are 

 indebted to Sir Richard Owen, who examined a sub-fossil 

 skeleton dug up in the Lincolnshire fens in 1846. He considered 

 this specimen to belong to an extinct species, qualifying his 

 view with the proviso " until it should be proved that it still 

 existed in our seas ". Sixteen years after Owen's description 

 was published, in 1861, a school of about a hundred False 

 Killers appeared in the Bay of Kiel, and from animals that 

 stranded the external form was made known to zoologists in 

 the following year. 



From the time of the first appearance of Pseudorca in the 

 flesh down to the present, if there is one feature more than 

 any other which has characterized this species it is its irregular 

 occurrence in different and widely-separated parts of the 

 world, normally making its presence known by large numbers 

 becoming stranded and dying on the shore. On the Atlantic 



