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Minke whale

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Facts: The Minke Whale

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Minke whale spotted off Irish coast

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The Whales of the Great Barrier Reef | Great Barrier Reef

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Minke Whale escapes after becoming stranded in River Thames Richmond lock

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Curious Antarctic minke whale

The minke whale, or lesser rorqual, is a type of baleen whale. The two species of minke whale are the common minke whale and the Antarctic minke whale. The minke whale was first described by the Danish naturalist Otto Fabricius in 1780, who assumed it must be an already known species and assigned his specimen to Balaena rostrata, a name given to the northern bottlenose whale by Otto Friedrich Müller in 1776. In 1804, Bernard Germain de Lacépède described a juvenile specimen of Balaenoptera acuto-rostrata. The name is a partial translation of Norwegian minkehval, possibly after a Norwegian whaler named Meincke, who mistook a northern minke whale for a blue whale.
    • Taxonomy 

    • Description 

    • Behavior 

    • Diet 

    • Population and conservation status 

    • Whaling 

    • Whale watching