Family BAL.ENOPTERID/E. 
Genus Megaptera. 
THE HUMPBACKED WHALE. 
Megaptera boops, Fabricius. 
Plate 42. 
The Humpbacked Whale, the only representative of its genus, is 
characterised by its stout massive body, low dorsal fin, and extraordinary 
length of the usually glistering white flippers. In form the latter are 
narrow, slightly curved, and deeply indented along the outer and part 
of their inner margins. The throat and chest are grooved with long 
furrows to allow the necessary expansion of these parts, when the mouth 
is filled with water containing the small fishes and crustaceans on which 
the animal lives. 
In this species these furrows are set farther apart and are less 
numerous than in the Rorquals. The baleen is short and black in 
colour. 
About the region of the snout and lower lips are some small knobs 
or tubercles. In the skeleton the seven vertebras of the neck are free, 
and not fused together as in the Right Whales. 
The upper parts of the Humpbacked Whale are black in colour, but 
the under surface varies considerably in different specimens, sometimes 
this is white, sometimes black, or often a combination of both colours. 
There is also a good deal of variation in the colour of the outer side 
of the flippers, which may be pure white, white varied with irregular 
61 
