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Baleen whales can have streamlined or large bodies, depending on the feeding behavior, and two limbs that are modified into flippers. The fin whale is the fastest baleen whale, recorded swimming at 10 m/s (36 km/h; 22 mph). Baleen whales use their baleen plates to filter out food from the water by either lunge-feeding or skim-feeding
Letter c in the picture indicates the undeveloped hind legs of a baleen whale. Vestigial characters are present throughout the animal kingdom, and an almost endless list could be given. Darwin said that "it would be impossible to name one of the higher animals in which some part or other is not in a rudimentary condition."
Whales share this characteristic with extinct marine reptiles, but not present-day marine mammals. [ 61 ] A very derived form of hyperphalangy, with six or more phalanges per digit, evolved convergently in rorqual whales and oceanic dolphins , and was likely associated with another wave of signaling within the interdigital tissues.
Female beaked whales' teeth are hidden in the gums and are not visible, and most male beaked whales have only two short tusks. Narwhals have vestigial teeth other than their tusk, which is present on males and 15% of females and has millions of nerves to sense water temperature, pressure and salinity.
Whales are fully aquatic, open-ocean animals: they can feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 tonnes (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the
Rodhocetus was a small whale measuring 2–3 m (6.6–9.8 ft) long. [4] Throughout the 1990s, a close relationship between cetaceans and mesonychians, an extinct group of cursorial, wolf-like ungulates, was generally accepted based on morphological analyses. In the late 1990s, however, cladistic analyses based on molecular data clearly placed ...
Pelvic spurs (also known as vestigial legs) are external protrusions found around the cloaca in certain superfamilies of snakes belonging to the greater infraorder Alethinophidia. [1] These spurs are made up of the remnants of the femur bone, which is then covered by a corneal spur, or claw-like structure. [ 1 ]
Examples include the legs of a centipede, the maxillary and labial palps of an insect, and the spinous processes of successive vertebrae in a vertebrate's backbone. Male and female reproductive organs are homologous if they develop from the same embryonic tissue, as do the ovaries and testicles of mammals, including humans. [citation needed]