Toothed whales facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Toothed whales |
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| Bottlenose dolphin | |
Scientific classification  |
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| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Infraorder: | Cetacea |
| Parvorder: | Odontoceti Flower, 1869 |
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| Diversity | |
| Around 73 | |
The Odontoceti is a suborder of the cetaceans. They are the toothed whales.
The Odontoceti includes all the whales which eat prey larger than plankton. Examples are: sperm whales, beaked whales, dolphins, and others. As the name suggests, the suborder has teeth rather than the baleen of Mysticeti whales. This means they are predators of small to large sized prey.
The Sperm Whale Physeter, the Killer Whale Orca and the Pilot Whale Globicephala all take large prey. By means of co-operation, Killer Whales can take prey larger than themselves, up to and including Blue Whale calves. Sperm Whales are specialist feeders on giant squid.
There are about 73 species.
Taxonomy
- Superfamily Delphinoidea; Porpoises, Dolphins, Pilot Whales, Killer Whales, Narwhal
- Superfamily Inioidea: some South American river dolphins
- Superfamily Lipotoidea: Chinese River Dolphin
- Superfamily Physeteroidea: Sperm Whales
- Superfamily Platanistoidea: River Dolphins proper
- Superfamily Ziphioidea: Bottlenose Whales, Beaked Whales
Images for kids
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A whale as depicted by Conrad Gesner, 1587, in Historiae animalium
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Fossil of Squalodon
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Biosonar by cetaceans
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Spectrogram of dolphin vocalizations. Whistles, whines, and clicks are visible as upside down V's, horizontal striations, and vertical lines, respectively.
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Orca hunting a Weddell seal
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Atlantic white-sided dolphin caught in a drive hunt in Hvalba on the Faroe Islands being taken away with a forklift
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An orca by the name of Ulises performing at SeaWorld, 2009
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See also
In Spanish: Odontoceti para niños
