Whales - Species | Beluga Whale

Beluga Whale - Delphinapterus leucas

The Beluga or White Whale is an Arctic species of whale, also referred to as the Sea Canary due to its unmistakable high-pitched squeaks and whistles. It is smaller than most other toothed whales, growing up to 5 meters in length, is all white in colour and has a distinctive melon-shaped head. Their melon is composed of fats and is extremely bulbous and malleable. Its function is to facilitate sound production, as it changes shape as the whales produces sound. Males generally weigh approximately 1,360 kilograms, with females being 900 kilograms. Like most dolphins and whales, the Beluga’s vertebrae in the neck are not fused together, allowing the animal much flexibility. Its mouth is called the rostrum, which contains about 8 to 10 teeth either side of the jaw. Their teeth are adapted for both grasping and tearing, as opposed to chewing.

Sexual maturity occurs in males at eight years of age, and females at five. A single calf is born in the spring after a gestation period of fifteen months. It is born at a weight of 80 kilograms and length of some 1.5 meters. They are usually born grey, which lightens to their distinctive pure white colour by the age of seven. Calves are nursed until they are about two years of age. Mating occurs during winter and early spring, when they are in their winter grounds. Belugas are said to live up to fifty years, with females being found to conceive as old as 20 years of age.

In springtime, the beluga whales move to their summer grounds of bays, estuaries and other shallow inlets. As their summer homes become clogged with ice during autumn, they move away for winter, most travelling in the direction of the advancing ice-pack and staying close to the edge of it for the winter months. Others stay under the ice, surviving only by finding patches of open water in the ice in which they surface to breathe. They also survive by finding pockets of air trapped under the ice. It seems they have the remarkable ability to sense open water through the ice by means of echo-location.

Belugas are very sociable, with pods sometimes numbering in the thousands. However, this makes them rather vulnerable to hunters. These pods tend to be unstable, whales sometimes being in a pod only for a few days at a time. The closest relationship is that of the mother and her calf, as their nursing times are approximately two years. Calves often return to the same estuary as their mother in the summer, meeting with their mother even after becoming fully mature. They are very playful whales and have been known to spray down humans or other whales with water. They forage on the seabed at depths of up to 1,000 feet for mainly fish, squid, octopus and crustaceans.

Their natural predators are polar bears, who hunt these whales when they become encircled by ice in winter. The worldwide population of the Beluga Whale is about 100,000.