Minke whale
| Minke whale | |
|---|---|
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| Dwarf minke whale | |
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| Size compared to an average human | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Subclass: | Eutheria |
| Order: | Cetacea |
| Suborder: | Mysticeti |
| Family: | Balaenopteridae |
| Genus: | Balaenoptera |
| Species: | B. acutorostrata B. bonaerensis |
Minke whale /ˈmɪnki/, or lesser rorqual, is a name given to two species of marine mammal belonging to a clade within the suborder of baleen whales. The minke whale was given its official designation by Lacepède in 1804, who described a juvenile specimen of Balænoptera acuto-rostrata. The name is a partial translation of Norwegian minkehval, possibly after a Norwegian whaler named Meincke, who mistook a northern minke whale for a blue whale.
Most modern classifications split the minke whale into two species;
Taxonomists further categorize the common minke whale into two or three subspecies; the North Atlantic minke whale, the North Pacific minke whale and dwarf minke whale. All minke whales are part of the rorquals, a family that includes the humpback whale, the fin whale, the Bryde's whale, the sei whale and the blue whale.
The junior synonyms for B. acutorostrata are B. davidsoni (Scammon 1872), B. minimia (Rapp, 1837) and B. rostrata (Fabricius, 1780). There is one synonym for B. bonaerensis - B. huttoni (Gray 1874).
Writing in his 1998 classification, Rice recognized two of the subspecies of the common minke whale - B. a. scammoni (Scammon's minke whale) and a further (taxonomically) unnamed subspecies found in the Southern Hemisphere, the dwarf minke whale (first described by Best, 1985).
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