as cosmopolitan lives in the warm subtropical and tropical waters the back-whale during the winter, while north it in the spring - and hikes southwards into the cold polar areas. it lasts on that occasion in coast-proximity and also inspects bays and estuaries occasionally.
Shape The back-whale have be penetrate the streamlined shape of the other furrow-whales but its body and covered not particularly in the big head-region and at the flippers with irregular protuberances and tubers.
With an average length of 12,6 m, measurements resulted in a weight of 29 t at 270 animals. But also copies of 15 m of length already were caught. The long flippers are probably the most conspicuous characteristic of a back-whale; they reach one third of the length approximately. With a 15 m long whale, they become up to 4 m long and 1 m wide. 10-25 furrows coat the before-curved Kehl and stomach-side. The upper jaw carries 350-400 Barten of 60-90 cm of length on each side. it back-Finn is relatively small with back-whales with 15-60 cm of height.
In the coloring, these whales can vary rather strongly. So there is to almost completely black animals while the stomach-side is drawn irregularly white normally. Always however, the tail-fluke and the flippers are under-page light. For usual, the skin of the back-whales healed strongly and coated with "whale-lice" and (Amphipoden, parasitic cancers) sea-smallpox, why these whales are observed when rubbing at rocks on occasion.
Reproduction Although back-whales are no fast swimmers with a maximum speed of 3,5-5 knots (= 6,5-9,2 km per hour), they distinguish themselves through its severe mobility. With the combination in the spring, the partners lie down together (January until May in the North-Atlantic, August until September in the south) at the side. they process yourself mutually with its flippers, on occasion, both also jump together vertically into the air in order to fall back again with loud noise afterwards. Quite frequently, these heavy whales beat downright somersaults, with what they can somersault onward and backwards.
The calf becomes after a Tragzeit of 12 months, probably with the tail in front, born. A 12,5 m long female brought heavy calf to the world such a 4 m long one and approximately 1350 kg. One found back-whales with two fetuses only in few cases. Twins therefore are quite rare. After 11 months, the boys are cured and are sexually mature with approximately 12 m of length.
Food Back-whales eat Krill, occasionally also smaller fish, mainly. They developed an uncommon catch-method on that occasion. If they discovered one swarm of small fish or Krill, they orbit it and let climbed air-blisters on that occasion upward. The swarm-animals find themselves "caught" behind this "pearl-curtain" from air-blisters and become such an easy prey of the back-whales.
Chant Another peculiarity of the back-whales is its chant. Today, one possesses extensive underwater-receptions of singing animals; the individual stanzas are recurrent and seem to be individually established for each animal. The shortest chants last approximately 6 minutes, that the longest until a point. The water partially transfers these sounds over 100 nautical miles over wide routes; probably the chants are a means of the communication between the whales and serve presumably particularly the partner-finding.
Whale-catch The main-hunt-area for back-whales was the Antarctica with its krillreichen feed-reasons. In the beginning-years since 1904, back-whales amounted approximately 90 percent of the entire antarctic catch, in 1911, 8500 animals were still carried off, 11 years later against it only 9. From this originally approximately 100 000 animals on the southern hemisphere still lives today in 5000 maybe, that is only approximately 5 percent the once-Mali-towards continuance. In the North-Pacific, one estimates the continuance at approximately 2000 animals today, and in the North-Atlantic, 5000-6000 animals still should live and with it the biggest population at all.
Footpaths they are not exactly known, however, one knows that several of each other separate continuances exist in the southern seas. Whether back-whales of the northern hemisphere move over the equator southwards and turned back, is not known.
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