Marine mammals
Humpback whale
Megaptera novaeangliae
Epipelagic zone
Famous for its spectacular breaches out of the water and its complex songs that can last for hours, it undertakes one of the longest migrations known in any mammal every year.
🗺️ Geographic range
Every ocean in the world, migrating each year between polar feeding grounds and tropical breeding grounds.
📊 Population
Global population estimated by the IUCN at more than 135,000 mature individuals, rising sharply since the 1966 ban on commercial whaling — one of the most striking successes in marine conservation.
Habitat
- Pacific Ocean · High seas / open water · Epipelagic zone · Migration
🥚 Reproduction
One calf per pregnancy, about 11 months' gestation, roughly a year of nursing.
Behaviour
- Diet
- Krill and small fish, caught in groups using a "bubble net" technique.
- Hunting
- Encircles prey with a curtain of bubbles before swallowing them by the thousand.
- Communication
- Complex songs in males, which can last for hours and evolve from one year to the next.
- Social life
- Rather solitary or in small groups, with temporary gatherings at feeding sites.
Physiology
- Anatomy
- Long pectoral fins that can reach a third of the body's length.
- Respiration
- Pulmonary, with a double blowhole at the surface.
- Vision
- Modest, largely compensated for by hearing.
- Adaptations
- A coordinated group bubble-net hunting technique, one of the few collective hunting strategies known in whales.
🔗 Web of marine life
Predators
⚡ Its extraordinary abilities
- Songs that can last for hours and spread from one population to another
- Hunts in groups using a coordinated bubble net, a rare technique among whales
🏆 Records
One of the longest migrations known in a mammal
Some populations travel more than 8,000 km between feeding and breeding grounds.
Source: IUCN — Red List of Threatened Species
If you cross paths with this animal…
Risk: No danger to humans.
Behaviour: Curious, sometimes approaches boats without aggression.
Advice: Observe from the legally required distance, never cut across a migrating group's path.
💡 Did you know?
- Its songs can travel dozens of kilometres underwater.
- Each tail fluke carries a unique pattern, used by scientists to identify individual whales.
