Baleen this issue. A whale's baleen plates play the most important role in its filter-feeding process. To feed, a baleen whale opens its mouth widely and scoops in dense shoals of prey (such as krill, copepods, small fish, and sometimes birds that happen to be near the shoals), together with large volumes of water. It then partly shuts its mouth and presses its tongue against its upper jaw, forcing the water to pass out sideways through the baleen, thus sieving out the prey, which it then swallows. People formerly used baleen (usually referred to as "whalebone") for making numerous items where
Baleen whale a neighboring population over a few breeding seasons. Unlike their toothed whale counterparts, baleen whales are hard to study because of their immense size. Intelligence tests such as the mirror test cannot be done because their bulk and lack of body language makes a reaction impossible to be definitive. However, studies on the brains of humpback whales revealed spindle cells, which, in humans, control theory of mind. Because of this, it is thought that baleen whales, or at least humpback whales, have consciousness. Whaling by humans has existed since the Stone Age. Ancient whalers used harpoons to spear the bigger