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Porpoises and other smaller cetaceans have traditionally been hunted in many areas, at least in Asia, Europe and North America, for their meat and blubber. A dominant hunting technique is drive hunting, where a pod of animals is driven together with boats and usually into a bay or onto a beach.
Harbour porpoises tend to be solitary foragers, but they do sometimes hunt in packs and herd fish together. [11] Young porpoises need to consume about 7% to 8% of their body weight each day to survive, which is approximately 15 pounds or 7 kilograms of fish. Significant predators of harbour porpoises include white sharks and killer whales (orcas).
Porpoises, and other cetaceans, belong to the clade Cetartiodactyla with even-toed ungulates. Porpoises range in size from the vaquita, at 1.4 metres (4 feet 7 inches) in length and 54 kilograms (119 pounds) in weight, to the Dall's porpoise, at 2.3 m (7 ft 7 in) and 220 kg (490 lb).
Dall's porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli) is a species of porpoise endemic to the North Pacific. It is the largest of porpoises and the only member of the genus Phocoenoides. The species is named after American naturalist W. H. Dall. William Healey Dall's 1873 field notes on Phocoenoides from the Smithsonian Institution's Field Books collection
The family Balaenidae, the right whales, contains two genera and four species. All right whales have no ventral grooves; a distinctive head shape with a strongly arched, narrow rostrum, bowed lower jaw; lower lips that enfold the sides and front of the rostrum; and long, narrow, elastic baleen plates (up to nine times longer than wide) with fine baleen fringes.
Spectacled porpoise: circumpolar in cool sub-Antarctic and low Antarctic waters Phocoena phocoena: Harbour porpoise: cooler coastal waters of the North Atlantic, North Pacific and the Black Sea Phocoena sinus: Vaquita: northern area of the Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortez Phocoena spinipinnis: Burmeister's porpoise: coast of South America
Articles relating to the porpoises (family Phocoenidae), small dolphin-like cetaceans. Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals and belugas than to the true dolphins. There are eight extant species of porpoise, all among the smallest of the toothed whales. Porpoises are distinguished from dolphins by ...
New England states are indicated in red. There are 7 orders, 17 families, 40 genera, and 60 species represented among the mammals of New England.If extirpated, coastal, introduced, and accidental species are included these numbers increase to 8 orders, 26 families, 67 genera, and 105 species.