From fun and affordable field trips for students to amazing summer adventures, our camps combine education and entertainment in a way that connects people to the sea and sea life like nowhere else. Some species, such as gray whales and sei whales, have white or faintly-colored marks or scars. Baleen whales evolved …

SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund. the whale's exhalation is called the "blow," or the "spout." Baleen is a skin derivative. Baleen Whales have keratin baleen plates instead of teeth.

Hear animal sounds for animals like anteaters, dolphins, frogs and more. Rorquals and gray whales have four digits instead of five: the thumb bones are not present. Come face-to-face with the wonders of wildlife through species-focused episodes and related classroom activities. Bowhead whales are particularly known for their long baleen plates, which reach lengths of 4 m (13 ft.). A humpback whale has several knobs on its head.

Humpback whales are black or gray except for their flippers and the undersides of their flukes, which are white. Are you wild about whales?

Record size for a blue whale–for a specimen taken during the whaling years–is 34 m (112 ft.).

Some species leapout of the water, which may allow them to travel faster.

In right whales, all seven neck vertebrae are fused, and right whales are incapable of side-to-side head movement. North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis).

External parasites and algae growing on a whale's skin affect the coloration of some species.

Blue whales sometimes exhibit a yellowish ventral surface, a result of diatom growth.

Right, bowhead, and gray whales have no dorsal fin.

When swimming, baleen whales rely on their flippers for locomotion in a wing-like manner similar to penguins and sea turtles. Members of the rorqual family have between 25 and 100 throat grooves, depending on the species. Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis) Poop. Rorquals and the pygmy right whale have a fin on top called a dorsal fin. Diatoms grow on the skin of some species, including the blue whale.

Here is an image of whale poop (feces), from a North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). Average length for Antarctic blue whales is about 25 m (82 ft.) for males and 27 m (89 ft.) for females. North Atlantic right whales are large whales, growing to lengths up to about 60 feet and weights of up to about 80 tons. What do Baleen whale look like? The baleen plates look like hair that dangle in the mouths of whales, like a hairy curtain, or like a hairy comb. Sei whales often travel just below the water surface, leaving a series of 'flukeprints' -- circular slick spots caused by the water displaced by the upward motion of the whale's tail. The skeletal elements are rigidly supported by connective tissue: thick cartilage pads lie lengthwise between the bones. This image shows a humpback whale lunge-feeding in the Gulf of Maine.

The whale takes a big gulp of fish or krill and saltwater, and then uses the baleen plates hanging from its upper jaw to filter the water out and capture its prey inside.

Flipper movement is continuous. Flukes are flattened pads of tough, fibrous connective tissue, completely without bone or muscle.

But it is difficult for humans to detect whale poop unless they've seen the action actually happen, so scientists have trained dogs to sniff out the poop and point the way. In this image, an approximately 60-foot long fin whale is coming to the ocean surface to breathe through its two blowholes located on the top of its head. Pygmy right whales are among the smallest baleen whales.

Humpback whales are about 50 feet long and weigh 20 to 30 tons on average. In baleen whales, the only traces of hind limbs are two reduced, rod-shaped pelvic bones. Adult females reach lengths of 6.5 m (21 ft.), and adult males may reach 6.1 m (20 ft.). Some are countershaded: a type of protective coloration in which the dorsal (top) surface is darker than the ventral (underneath) surface. According to the American Cetacean Society, the sei whale got its name from the Norwegian word seje (pollock) because sei whales appeared off the coast of Norway at the same time as the pollock each year. Blue whales typically have 260 to 400 baleen plates on each side of the upper jaw. (Diatoms are one-celled algae.). The information is especially interesting for right whales, as scientists discovered that if they can collect whale poop and extract the hormones from it, they can learn about the stress levels of the whale, and even if a whale is pregnant.

The North Atlantic right whale’s Latin name, Eubalaena glacialis, translates to “true whale of the ice.”. We don't always see poop as well-formed as that shown in this image, which was sent in by reader Jonathan Gwalthney. Individual humpbacks can be distinguished by the shape of their dorsal fin and the pattern on the underside of their tail. They reach lengths up to about 100 feet and can weigh anywhere from 100 to 150 tons. The throat grooves fold back into a streamlined shape when a whale isn’t feeding. Humpback whales have pectoral flippers that are as long as 1/3 their body length and are a contrasting white color. These ocean giants feed on some of the smallest animals in the world.

Their most obvious characteristic is a sharply curved dorsal fin, which is located about two-thirds of the way down their back.

The diatom layer creates an olive-colored film on the skin. Because they don't have gills, they need to come to the surface to breathe out of the blowholes on top of their head.

In the ocean, water helps support an animal's body weight, allowing for the potential for greater size than on land.

The epidermis is about 5 to 7 mm (0.2 to 0.3 in.) Unlike most large whales, they lack a dorsal fin. Barnacle growth, shark or killer whale bites, and natural pigmentation differences can create these markings. Pigmy right whales live in temperate waters of the Southern Hemisphere.

The horizontal lobes of the tail of a whale are called flukes (each lobe is called a fluke.). Right whales have the longest baleen.

Blue whales are found in all the world's oceans.

Baleen whales have two blowholes (nostrils) on the top of the head and so their blows are bushier than those of toothed whales who have a single blowhole.