Animal · Canada, Russia, United States
Beluga whale
Delphinapterus leucas — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The beluga is a small white whale of the Arctic that has no fin on its back and can turn its head to look around, which most whales cannot do. Sailors called it the sea canary.
Picture credit: Stan Shebs (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Versions111 (CC BY 4.0) · Carquinyol (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the beluga whale live?
Home: Cold coastal seas and river mouths of the Arctic.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Canada, Russia, the United States, Greenland, Norway.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 3-5.5 m long. It weighs about 1 150 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
Instead of a fin, a beluga has a low ridge along its back. That sounds like a loss, but under a roof of sea ice a tall fin would only be in the way, and the hard ridge helps the whale push up through thin ice to breathe. On its forehead sits the melon, a lump of fat that the whale can squeeze into different shapes while it sends out clicks and listens for the echoes. Belugas whistle, chirp and squeal so much that old sailors named them sea canaries. Calves are born grey and turn white only after seven to nine years, and a beluga can live to be seventy or more. About 200 000 of them swim in the Arctic today.
Find it on the globe
Beluga whale is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Why is the beluga white?
Among drifting ice floes a white animal is hard to see from above, which helps against killer whales and polar bears. Belugas are not born white: calves are grey and pale slowly over seven to nine years.
Why is the beluga called the sea canary?
Because it is extremely noisy. Belugas whistle, chirp, click and squeal to keep in touch with the group, and the sounds carry through the hull of a wooden boat, which is where the old nickname comes from.
What does a beluga eat?
Mostly fish such as Arctic cod, herring, capelin and salmon, plus shrimp, squid and worms from the sea floor. It finds prey in dark water by echolocation, listening for the echoes of its own clicks.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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