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( Minke Whale)
The Minke Whale or Lesser Rorqual is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales. The Minke Whale was first identified by Lacepede in 1804. Most modern classifications split the minke whale into two species; the Common or Northern Minke Whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) and the Antarctic or Southern Minke Whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis).[1] Taxonomists further categorize the Common Minke Whale into two or three subspecies; the North Atlantic Minke Whale, the North Pacific Minke Whale and Dwarf Minke Whale. All Minke Whales are part of the rorquals, a family that includes the Humpback Whale, the Fin Whale, the Bryde's Whale, the Sei Whale and the Blue Whale. The junior synonyms for B. acutorostrata are B. davidsoni Cope 1872, B. minimia (Rapp, 1837) and B. rostrata (Fabricius, 1780). There is one synonym for B. bonaerensis - B. huttoni Gray 1874. Writing in his 1998 classification, Rice recognised two of the subspecies of the Common Minke Whale - B. a. scammoni (Scammon's Minke Whale) and a further (taxonomically) unnamed subspecies found in the southern hemisphere to which he gave the common name the Dwarf Minke Whale (first described by Best, 1986).
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