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There’s plenty you likely don’t know about this toothy “melonhead.”
How much do you know about the white whale? No, not the famous fictional one, Canada’s white whale: the beluga. While many belugas are migratory, there are populations in Quebec and Nunavut that call Canada home year-round. Here are five more facts you may not know about one of the world’s most recognizable whales, the lumpy-headed — but still adorbs — Delphinapterus leucas.
Something To chew On
Baleen whales, such as humpbacks, eat plankton or other small foods by filtering it through a comb-like, flexible mouthplate, but belugas — like orcas — have teeth. “Toothed” whales don’t use their chompers to chew food, though, only to grab hold of prey so they can then gulp it down. In the case of belugas, that prey is often fish, but meal choices can vary depending on the time of year and what’s available in the water. These whales are opportunists. They’ll take advantage of whatever they find instead of targeting specific prey.
A beluga’s vocal range is so varied that they’re even known to mimic human speech.
Heads in the Game
Belugas (and other toothed whales) also differ from baleen whales in their ability to use echolocation to navigate and find prey. Similar to bats, they send out “clicks” and use the resulting echoes to pinpoint objects in their environment. Belugas emit the sounds by pushing air through vibrating tissue along their nasal passages, below their blowholes. The noise is focused into a narrow beam with the help of a fatty lump on the whale’s forehead called a “melon.” It’s squishy, and the whale can manipulate it at will — wiggle it, for example — to direct noise. All toothed whales have a melon, but it’s especially prominent on a beluga whale. That’s why one of the species’ nicknames is “melonhead.”
Sing Like a Bird
Belugas have another — more flattering? — nickname: “canaries of the sea.” They have the ability to produce a wide range of bird-like noises, including whistles, mews, bleats, and chirps. Unlike echolocation clicks, these noises are often for communication — belugas are very social. As with birds, it takes time — up to two years — for a young beluga to learn a full range of vocalizations. A beluga’s vocal range is so varied that they’re even known to mimic human speech. And they have another human-esque quality: they can “nod” their heads. Their neck vertebrae aren’t fused together, so, along with side-to-side, they can move their heads up and down. Most whales can’t. (Oh. Maybe they just … blink twice for yes?)
A Whale of a Different Colour
Even though belugas are on the smaller end of the whale scale (up to 1,600 kg/1.6 tons compared to the blue whale, which can weigh 190 tons), blubber can make up about 40% of a beluga’s weight. Maybe that’s why these whales aren’t the fastest of swimmers. A beluga’s maximum speed is about 20 km/h; a great white shark, on the other hand, can reach more than 50 km/h. But belugas are skilled at swimming on their backs. (For the record, a shark flipped on its back can’t even move.) And thanks to having no dorsal fin — possibly an adaptation to help curb heat loss in cold waters — belugas can swim directly underneath sea ice, taking advantage of the camouflage it provides. At least, they can take advantage of it eventually: calves are born dark, so it's better to hide in the shallow waters where their mothers give birth. Young belugas lose pigment over the years, becoming completely white (or greyish white) in under a decade.
Notorious K.G.B.
Unless you count the whale in Canadian singer-songwriter Raffi’s song “Baby Beluga,” there aren’t any famous belugas in fiction. But there was one in real life: Hvaldimir, discovered in Norway in April 2019 wearing a camera harness labelled “Equipment St. Petersburg.” (These details lead to his name, a portmanteau of the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and Vladimir Putin’s first name.) Because of the harness, and the fact that Hvaldimir appeared responsive to human commands, some people thought the whale was a Russian spy. That’s not quite as bizarre as it sounds. The Russian government does have a history of training marine mammals for military purposes, for example, using dolphins to patrol and protect naval bases.
