50 Fun Facts About Beluga Whale

In 1985 a Soviet icebreaker led some 2,000 trapped belugas to open sea by playing what on its loudspeakers?

Classical music did it: the whales had refused to follow the icebreaker Moskva until the crew tried it. Local people had kept them alive until then by feeding them frozen fish.

NOC, a beluga kept by the US Navy, once made a diver surface in confusion by doing what?

Mimicking human speech was NOC's trick: the diver thought a colleague had ordered him out of the water. To do it the whale dropped his voice several octaves below normal beluga calls.

A tame beluga that appeared off Norway in 2019 wearing a camera harness was widely suspected of being what?

A trained spy was the popular theory, since the harness was marked Equipment St Petersburg. Norwegians named him Hvaldimir, joining hval, their word for whale, to Vladimir.

Beluga caviar, among the world's costliest foods, comes not from the whale but from which fish?

Sturgeon is the source: the critically endangered beluga sturgeon. Fish and whale are unrelated, and both take their name from the Russian word for white.

Which nickname did sailors give the beluga because of its constant chirps, squeals and whistles?

Sea canary is the name sailors gave the beluga long ago. Its repertoire also runs to clicks, clucks and even moos.

In 2009 a captive beluga in Harbin, China, saved a free diver paralysed by cramp by doing what?

Lifting her to the surface took one gentle grip: the whale held the diver's foot in its mouth and carried her up from the bottom of an icy pool.

Which Canadian children's singer released the 1980 album Baby Beluga after meeting a whale named Kavna?

Raffi wrote the title song after meeting Kavna, a beluga at the Vancouver Aquarium. The album opens with recordings of real belugas calling to each other.

Which trick in the water, unusual among whales, can the highly manoeuvrable beluga pull off?

Swimming backwards is a beluga speciality. Built for agility rather than speed, the whale usually cruises at only 3 to 9 km/h.

The beluga is also called the white whale, but which kind of whale was Herman Melville's Moby Dick?

Sperm whale is the species of Moby Dick. Melville modelled him on Mocha Dick, a real pale bull that whalers fought off Chile in the early 19th century.

Bailey, a beluga whose echolocation becomes key to the plot, appears in which Pixar film?

Finding Dory introduces Bailey alongside Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark. The pair break out of their exhibit to help with a rescue.

Thanks to an unusual feature of its spine, a beluga can do what that most whales cannot?

Turn and nod its head is the answer: its seven neck vertebrae are not fused, so a beluga can scan for prey and predators without rotating its body.

Adult belugas are famous for their white skin, but what colour are beluga calves in their first years?

Dark grey calves fade slowly as they grow. Females turn fully white at about seven years old and males at about nine.

Which Arctic whale is the beluga's closest living relative and the only other member of the family Monodontidae?

Narwhal is the answer, and the two can interbreed. A skull kept by an Inuk hunter was confirmed by DNA in 2019 as a hybrid of the pair, nicknamed a narluga.

Which feature of most whales and dolphins does the beluga lack, an absence that helps it swim beneath sea ice?

Dorsal fin is the missing part, replaced by a tough ridge that slides easily under ice floes. The genus name Delphinapterus means dolphin without a fin.

Which land predator catches belugas trapped at shrinking breathing holes, dragging them out onto the ice?

Polar bear attacks come when winter ice traps belugas far from open water. One bear of under 180 kg was recorded landing a whale that weighed 935 kg.

Which predator of belugas is kept from following them under sea ice by its own towering back fin?

Killer whale fins can stand 2 m tall, which stops the hunters getting close to breathing holes in the ice. Belugas also crowd into the shallows when the hunters are near.

About 40 percent of a beluga's body weight, far more than in most warm-water whales, is made up of what?

Blubber up to 15 cm thick wraps the whole body except the head. It insulates the whale in near-freezing water and stores energy for lean months.

Two belugas retired from a Shanghai aquarium in 2019 were flown to an open-water sanctuary off which country?

Iceland is home to the sanctuary, set in the Westman Islands off the south coast. The pair travelled about 6,000 miles by air, land and sea to reach it.

How do belugas, like dolphins, manage to sleep without losing the ability to surface and breathe?

With half the brain awake, a beluga never fully switches off. Deep sleep occurs in only one hemisphere at a time, as in other toothed whales.

Which biological trait, found in only a handful of mammals, do female belugas share with women?

Menopause is known in only a handful of species, nearly all of them toothed whales. A beluga's fertility declines from about 25, and no births are recorded after 41.

Which fruit shares its name with the bulbous forehead organ a beluga reshapes to focus its echolocation clicks?

Melon is the organ's name, a mass of fatty tissue that works as an acoustic lens. A beluga changes its shape by blowing air around its sinuses.

Why do belugas gather in shallow estuaries each summer to rub their bodies against gravel riverbeds?

To shed old skin is the reason, in a yearly moult that is unusual among whales. Over the winter the outer layer thickens and can turn yellowish.

With teeth too small and blunt for chewing, how does a beluga get fish and shrimp into its mouth?

By suction, pulling prey in and swallowing it whole. That limits the menu to animals small enough not to stick in the whale's throat.

Which US state's official marine fossil is a beluga skeleton unearthed by railroad workers in 1849?

Vermont has the Charlotte whale, dug from a field more than 150 miles from the ocean. It swam in the Champlain Sea, an arm of the Atlantic that flooded the region after the ice age.

Which Canadian town on Hudson Bay sees thousands of belugas gather in its river estuary every summer?

Churchill, Manitoba, draws the whales each July and August, when they move into the warmer river mouth to calve.

Belugas of which Canadian river have carried so many pollutants that their carcasses were treated as toxic waste?

St. Lawrence belugas live far south of other populations, downstream of heavy industry. A study of 129 adults found that 27 percent had suffered cancer.

Which Alaskan waterway beside Anchorage holds an isolated, endangered population of only a few hundred belugas?

Cook Inlet belugas stay all year, sharing the water with Alaska's biggest city and main transport hub. They were listed as endangered in 2008.

Which showman exhibited the first captive beluga at his New York museum in 1861?

P. T. Barnum made the beluga one of the first whales ever kept in captivity. It is still among the most commonly kept, in aquariums across three continents.

In 1966 a beluga nicknamed Moby Dick caused a sensation by swimming far up which European river?

Rhine skippers who reported the whale near Duisburg were given alcohol tests by disbelieving police. Its skin, blotched by the filthy water, is said to have helped stir German environmentalism.

Benny, a lone beluga that lingered near Gravesend for months in 2018, was living in which river's estuary?

Thames sightings of a beluga had last been recorded in 1913. Benny stayed into the winter, delaying work on a planned tunnel, and left in early 2019.

Which traditional Inuit food, usually eaten raw, is made from the skin and fat of belugas and other whales?

Muktuk is rich in vitamin C, and British Arctic explorers ate it to ward off scurvy. It can also be served frozen, cooked or pickled.

Belugas often follow which huge Arctic whale that can smash breathing holes through ice with its skull?

Bowhead whale skulls are massive and triangular, built for breaking up through sea ice. Belugas follow behind and breathe at the openings.

Belugas have superb hearing and good eyesight, but their brains lack the structures for which sense?

Smell is the sense: like all toothed whales, belugas have no olfactory lobes, so they probably cannot smell at all. Taste seems to survive: a beluga reacts at once to blood in the water.

Through which part of its body is a beluga thought to receive most of the sounds it hears?

Lower jaw bones are hollow and filled with fat that carries sound to the middle ear. The tiny ear openings behind a beluga's eyes may not work at all.

What name is given to the stretches of open water amid sea ice where wintering belugas come up to breathe?

Polynyas take their name from a Russian word for a natural ice hole. Belugas that spend the winter in the pack ice depend on them for air.

A young beluga found dead near Fairbanks, nearly 1,700 km inland, had probably followed which migrating fish?

Salmon runs draw belugas far up rivers such as the Yukon. In Alaska's Bristol Bay, the five salmon species are the whales' main fish prey.

Which aircraft maker flies a bulbous cargo plane officially nicknamed the Beluga for its whale-like shape?

Airbus first named the plane the Super Transporter, but the whale nickname caught on and was officially adopted. The fleet carries aircraft parts between factories.

Wild belugas have been seen carrying planks, a fishing net and even the skeleton of which animal on their backs?

Caribou bones are the strangest load on record, seen during the calving season. Captive females carry floats and buoys the same way, so experts suspect a surrogate behaviour.

What advantage is the adult beluga's white skin thought to give it in Arctic waters?

Camouflage among sea ice is the likely benefit, hiding the whale from its main predators. Its species name, leucas, is simply the Greek for white.

Young belugas return each summer to the same estuary as which relative, sometimes even once fully grown?

Their mother shows them the route, and migration patterns pass down the generations that way. Some belugas cover as much as 6,000 km in a year.

How do scientists estimate a beluga's age, a method that revealed lifespans of 70 years or more?

Counting layers in its teeth works much like reading tree rings. A 2006 radiocarbon study showed that one layer forms each year, not two, roughly doubling earlier age estimates.

What family nickname do researchers give an adult beluga that watches over a group of other whales' calves?

An aunt is the term for these helpers, who are not the calves' own parents. Captive females have even produced milk for calves that were not theirs.

How do belugas feeding on the seabed uncover prey that is hidden beneath the silt?

Squirting jets of water blasts the silt away: the whale takes in a mouthful and forces it out again. Most seabed foraging happens 20 to 40 metres down.

Tanned beluga hide, thick enough to work as leather, was once cut into which everyday footwear item?

Shoelaces of beluga leather were still being made in the early 1900s, along with horse harnesses and drive belts for sawmills.

In 1928 which Canadian province offered a bounty on belugas, wrongly blamed for ruining local fisheries?

Quebec paid 15 dollars for each dead whale, and the killing ran on into the 1950s. Later study showed the belugas' appetite for fish had been badly overestimated.

Which oxygen-storing muscle protein, far richer in belugas than in land mammals, sustains their long dives?

Myoglobin holds oxygen inside the muscles themselves. A diving beluga also slows its heart from about 100 beats a minute to as few as 12.

Which naturalist, the namesake of a fluffy Asian wild cat, first described the beluga for science in 1776?

Peter Simon Pallas was a Berlin-born zoologist who spent decades working in the Russian Empire. Pallas's cat, Pallas's gull and many other animals carry his name.

Fossil relatives of the beluga found in Baja California and Virginia show its family once lived where?

In warm waters, it seems: another five-million-year-old relative, found in Italy, lay among the remains of bull and tiger sharks, both tropical species.

In August 2022 a lost and dangerously thin beluga captured French hearts after straying far up which river?

Seine rescuers lifted the whale out of a lock west of Paris, but its breathing failed during the operation and vets had to put it down.

Europe's first captive-born beluga calf arrived in 2006 at L'Oceanogràfic, a marine park in which Spanish city?

Valencia's first calf lived only 25 days, but a second, born at the park in 2016, was raised successfully on enriched milk.