Bottlenose Whale

Bottlenose Whale 

(Hyperoodon ampullatus), a mammal of the family Ziphiidae, order Cetacea. Males are up to 9.4 m in length; females, up to 8.7 m. The animal’s snout is beaklike. The whales’ bodies are dark gray above and gray underneath. Old bottlenose whales have yellow-white spots on the belly and sides and white patches on the forehead and snout, occasionally on the neck. There is one pair of teeth (rarely, two), located on the front end of the lower jaw; the teeth are not covered by the upper jaw. The bottlenose whale lives in the northern parts of the Atlantic Ocean, swimming north to Greenland, Spitsbergen, and Novaia Zemlia in the summer and migrating south in the winter. The whales feed on cephalopod mollusks and occasionally on fish. They stay in schools of ten to 20 individuals, or in places of food accumulation, in schools of up to several hundred. The whaling yield is insignificant (they are hunted only by Norway). One bottlenose whale can yield up to 2 tons of fat and 200 kg of spermaceti.

REFERENCES

Tomilin, A. G. Kitoobraznye. (Zveri SSSR i prilezhashchikh stran, vol. 9.) Moscow, 1957.
Tomilin, A. G. Kitoobraznye fanny morei SSSR. Moscow, 1962.

V. G. GEPTNER