Northern minke whale
| Common minke whale Temporal range: Pliocene - Recent |
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| Lithography by Bocourt | |
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| Size compared to an average human | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Infraorder: | Cetacea |
| Family: | Balaenopteridae |
| Genus: | Balaenoptera |
| Species: | B. acutorostrata |
| Binomial name | |
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Balaenoptera acutorostrata Lacepede, 1804 |
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| Subspecies | |
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| Common minke whale range | |
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| Dwarf minke whale range | |
| Synonyms | |
The common minke whale or northern minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) is a species of minke whale within the suborder of baleen whales. It is the smallest member of the rorquals and the second smallest species of baleen whale. Although first ignored by whalers due to its small size and low oil yield, it began to be exploited by various countries beginning in the early 20th century. As other species declined larger numbers of common minke whales were caught, largely for their meat. It is now one of the primary targets of the whaling industry. There is a dwarf form in the Southern Hemisphere.
This species is known in the fossil record from the Pliocene period to the Quaternary period (age range: 3.6 million years ago to present day).
The origins of the species' common name are obscure. One of the first references to the name came in Henrik Johan Bull's account of his 1893-95 voyage to the Antarctic, when he mentioned catching a small whale "called in the Arctic language a Mencke whale, after a German who accompanied Mr. Foyn on some of his voyages." According to the British writer John Guille Millais (The mammals of Great Britain and Ireland, 1906, vol. 3, p. 279), "Minkie was a Norwegian seaman who was always calling 'Hval' at whatever backfin he saw. He is now regarded as the type of the 'tenderfoot' at sea. Norwegians often refer to any small whale with some contempt or amusement as a 'Minkie' or 'Minkie's hval'." The American marine biologist and painter Richard Ellis, citing the Norwegian scientist Age Jonsgård, stated "that Meincke was a German laborer working for Svend Foyn, inventor of the grenade harpoon. Meincke 'one day mistook a school of this whale species for blue whales.... most probably he made this mistake during Foyn's whaling operations in the Varanger Fjord between 1868 and 1885."
It has formerly been known as the little piked whale, the lesser or least rorqual, and the sharp-headed finner. American whalemen in the 19th century simply thought of them as "young finbacks" or a "Finback's calf", apparently under the impression that they were juveniles of their larger relative, the fin whale. They were also called zwergwal (German: "dwarf whale") or vågehval (Norwegian: "bay whale"). In Greenland they are known by the Danish name sildepisker ("herring thresher").
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Wikipedia