Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 128, August 2015, pp. 1-18. | Página 7

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Cancerous vertebral ailment caused the adherence of the two vertebras of the 24-meters
Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) which stranded on the Kazma (Kadmah) coast in
Kuwait in 1963. Educational Science Museum in Kuwait. Photo by: Prof. Dr. Norman
Ali Bassam Khalaf-von Jaffa. 24.06.2014.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50022881@N00/14566795991/
There have been at least 11 documented cases of blue/fin hybrid adults in the
wild. Arnason and Gullberg (1993) describe the genetic distance between a blue
and a fin as about the same as that between a human and a gorilla. Researchers
working off Fiji believe they photographed a hybrid humpback/blue whale
(Wikipedia).
The first published description of the blue whale comes from Robert Sibbald's
―Phalainologia Nova‖ (1694). In September 1692, Sibbald found a blue whale that
had stranded in the Firth of Forth—a male 24 m (78 feet)-long—which had
"black, horny plates" and "two large apertures approaching a pyramid in shape"
(Wikipedia).
The specific name musculus is Latin and could mean "muscle", but it can also be
interpreted as "little mouse". Carl Linnaeus, who named the species in his
seminal ―Systema Naturae‖ of 1758, would have known this and may have
intended the ironic double meaning. Herman Melville called this species
sulphur-bottom in his novel ―Moby-Dick’ due to an orange-brown or yellow
Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 128 – August 2015