beluga or white whale

beluga or white whale

The beluga or white whale (Delphinapterus leucas) is a cetacean mammal of the Monodontidae family. Their closest relative in the cetacean group is the narwhal. The white whale inhabits the cold waters around the Arctic Circle.

They are opportunistic hunters, and they eat a wide variety of fish, squid, crustaceans and octopuses.

The white whale is an animal that walks in flocks of 30 to 100 animals, which measures up to 5 meters in length and weighs up to 1.5 tons. It has between 8 and 10 teeth in each jaw.

They live between 25 and 30 years and females have a maximum of about eight pups during their lifetime. White whales have sexual dimorphism. Males have a more elongated body than females. Females weigh from 1.4 tonnes to 1.6 tonnes and males weigh from 1.7 tonnes to up to 1.9 tonnes. These animals are quite intelligent, being able to communicate with each other through high sounds or signals. Although they are called whales, they belong to the dolphin family. Beluga whales are social animals that live in a group of 30 to 100 individuals. They hunt their prey in group and are generally successful, having a percentage of hit of 76.4%, that is, almost always getting their food. Beluga whales do not have a dorsal fin. They can reach speeds of 55 km / h and can dive to depths of 425 m. Beluga whales use eco-colonization to find their food or to wander the ocean without getting lost. These animals live in the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean. There are currently about 150,193 beluga whales wandering the oceans, the number of which has reached the millions before. Many of them were hunted because of their flesh and fat to make oil. This killing caused the whale population to fall from 1.5 million to 153,000 individuals. Because of this, beluga whale hunting was banned. However, Arctic peoples are still allowed to hunt these whales, based on the tradition of belonging to groups of ancient peoples. Because of this, there is still much killing of beluga whales in the Arctic, which may still put the species at risk of extinction.