202 



WHALES 



Figure 140. Sections through the skulls of a Greenland Right Whale (below) and of a 

 Humpback [top) showing that Right Whales with their long baleen have strongly arched 

 upper jaws. {After Eschricht and Reinhardt, 1864, and Van Beneden and Gervais, 1880.) 



The plates have a fairly straight outer edge, slightly bent to the side, 

 and a rounded inner edge, and are rather broader on top than at the 

 bottom where the plates come to a point. The inner edge is less smooth 

 than the outer, and has a fringe, the hairs of which are thicker and less 

 elastic in some species than in others (Fig. 135). If we examine the mouth 

 of a Whalebone Whale, we find that the inner hairy fringes are intertwined 

 so that it resembles a coarse fibre mat, and it is this mat which acts as the 

 real strainer. In fact Whalebone Whales derive their name of Mysticetes 

 from the Greek mystax meaning moustache. 



The baleen of Right Whales is long and narrow (Fig. 136), and in the 

 Greenland Right Whale it has an average length of 10 feet and a maxi- 

 mum length of 14^ feet (Fig. 138). In Biscayan Right Whales its maximum 

 length is 8 feet, and in Pigmy Right Whales about 2^ feet. To make room 

 for these long plates, the rostrum of Right Whales has become markedly 

 arched (Figs. 137 and 140), and the slim lower jaw is provided with a 

 5-feet-high lower lip for sealing the sides of the mouth (Fig. 139). Even 

 when the jaws are wide open, the baleen still stretches to the bottom of the 

 mouth, so that, when the whale shuts its jaws, the tips of the plates are 

 bent inwards. While the large Right Whale's baleen is black, that of the 



