Baleen whales, the largest creatures on Earth, can send extremely low-frequency underwater calls to one another. But little is known about how they actually process these sounds. Now, researchers ...

“Ah, to be Jonah and watch baleen in action from a seat on a whale’s tongue,” he says. Baleen is the apparatus toothless whales rely on to filter food from the sea.

As a result, it has not been clear whether, as they evolved, early baleen whales retained the teeth of their ancestors until a filter-feeding system had been established. An early initial assumption, ...

Other baleen whales, such as the blue whale, identify large swarms of krill and engulf them in one huge gulp. They then contract their throat pleats and use their tongue to push the water out through ...

Humpback whales are well known for providing stunning marine spectacles, from breaching out of the water to singing haunting and melodic songs. These ocean giants are part of a group of baleen ...

These 19th-century whalers collected the bulk of the carcass, but the orcas would eat the baleen whales’ tongue through the lower jaw, a tacit agreement known as the “law of the tongue ...

Killer whales are the only natural predator of baleen whales—those that have "baleen" in their mouths to sieve their plankton diet from the water. More solitary than toothed whales, baleen ...

Bowhead, right and humpback whales have differently shaped arytenoids than other baleen whales which allows them to produce sounds that can reach frequencies as high as 6,000 hertz. Though these ...