Premium Only Content

The big whale 🐳
Nomenclature
The genus name, Balaenoptera, means winged whale[3] while the species name, musculus, could mean "muscle" or a diminutive form of "mouse", possibly a pun by Carl Linnaeus[4][3] when he named the species in Systema Naturae.[5] One of the first published descriptions of a blue whale comes from Robert Sibbald's Phalainologia Nova,[6] after Sibbald found a stranded whale in the estuary of the Firth of Forth, Scotland, in 1692. The name "blue whale" was derived from the Norwegian "blåhval", coined by Svend Foyn shortly after he had perfected the harpoon gun. The Norwegian scientist G. O. Sars adopted it as the common name in 1874.[7]
Blue whales were referred to as 'Sibbald's rorqual', after Robert Sibbald, who first described the species.[6] Herman Melville called the blue whale "sulphur bottom" in his novel Moby Dick[8] because of the accumulation of diatoms creating a yellowish appearance on their pale underside.[4][9]
Evolution
Balaenopteridae
Minke whale
B. musculus (blue whale)
B. borealis (sei whale)
Eschrichtius robustus (gray whale)
B. physalus (fin whale)
Megaptera novaeangliae (humpback whale)
A phylogenetic tree of six baleen whale species[10]
Blue whales are rorquals in the family Balaenopteridae. A 2018 analysis estimates that the Balaenopteridae family diverged from other families in between 10.48 and 4.98 million years ago during the late Miocene.[10] The earliest discovered anatomically modern blue whale is a partial skull fossil found in southern Italy, dating to the Early Pleistocene, roughly 1.5–1.25 million years ago.[11] The Australian pygmy blue whale diverged during the Last Glacial Maximum. Their more recent divergence has resulted in the subspecies having a relatively low genetic diversity,[12] and New Zealand blue whales have an even lower genetic diversity.[13]
Whole genome sequencing suggests that blue whales are most closely related to sei whales with gray whales as a sister group. This study also found significant gene flow between minke whales and the ancestors of the blue and sei whale. Blue whales also displayed high genetic diversity.
-
LIVE
Steven Crowder
2 hours ago🔴 Social Security Scandal: How Elites Use Illegals to Game The American System
103,072 watching -
LIVE
The Rubin Report
1 hour agoBill Maher Makes Gavin Newsom Look Dumb with Simple Questions
2,438 watching -
LIVE
Benny Johnson
55 minutes ago🚨 Trump CONFIRMS He Is Running For President AGAIN | Libs FREAK as Experts Say Third Term POSSIBLE
6,742 watching -
1:01:04
VINCE
3 hours agoWisconsin Decides The Future Of The World | Episode 11 - 03/31/25
188K136 -
59:21
BonginoReport
5 hours agoKansas Capitol: Satanists Violently Attack Christians - Early Edition w/Evita (Ep.171) - 03/31/2025
147K157 -
LIVE
LFA TV
14 hours agoLFA ALL DAY LIVE STEAM! 3/31/25
2,563 watching -
2:18:03
Matt Kohrs
13 hours agoStocks Crash, Breaking Tariff News & Trading $1M || The MK Show
63K2 -
LIVE
The Big Mig™
13 hours ago"Wisconsin Supreme Court Race Just Got Million Dollar Musk’d”
5,643 watching -
LIVE
Caleb Hammer
55 minutes agoTrans Socialists Hate America | Financial Audit
193 watching -
LIVE
Wendy Bell Radio
7 hours agoDems Need Rent-A-Mob Protests
8,721 watching