Finless porpoise
| Finless porpoise | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Infraorder: | Cetacea |
| Family: | Phocoenidae |
| Genus: |
Neophocaena Palmer, 1899 |
| Species: | N. phocaenoides |
| Binomial name | |
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Neophocaena phocaenoides (G. Cuvier, 1829) |
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| Finless porpoise range | |
The Indo-Pacific finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides), or finless porpoise, is one of seven porpoise species. Most of the population has been found around the Korean peninsula in the Yellow and East China Seas, although a freshwater population is found around Jiuduansha near Shanghai at the mouth of China's Yangtze River. Genetic studies indicate that the finless porpoise is the most basal living member of the porpoise family.
There is a degree of taxonomic uncertainty surrounding the species, with the N. p. phocaenoides subspecies perhaps representing a different species from N. p. sunameri and N. p. asiaeorientalis, currently reclassified as the narrow-ridged finless porpoise.
The Korean communities of the porpoise are sometimes known as sanggwaengi (Korean: 상괭이); the Chinese, particularly the subspecies N. p. asiaorientalis, as jiangtun (Chinese: , p jiāngtún, lit. "river suckling"); and the Japanese, particularly the subspecies N. p. sunameri, as sunameri (Japanese: 砂滑).
The finless porpoise lives in the coastal waters of Asia, especially around Japan, Korea, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and Bangladesh. Throughout their range, the porpoises stay in shallow waters, up to 50 m (160 ft) deep, close to the shore, in waters with soft or sandy seabeds, or in estuaries and mangrove swamps. In exceptional cases, they have been encountered as far as 135 km (84 mi) off-shore in the East China and Yellow Seas, albeit still in shallow water.
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Wikipedia