Bubble net feeding feed in a short amount of time. Humpback whales have a vertical throat roughly the size of a grapefruit. They cannot physically swallow anything larger than that. They are carnivores and primarily feed on small fish such as krill, juvenile salmon, and herring. They are also baleen whales, which means that they do not have teeth, so they must be able to eat things that they can swallow whole. They have several vertical grooves running down the length of their body so that they can hold large volumes of water and fish at one time. They feed for up to
Baleen whale D. W. Rice (of the Society for Marine Mammalogy) in assumed was an ironic reference to the animals' great size. An alternate name for the parvorder is "Mystacoceti" (from Greek "mustache" + "whale"), which, although obviously more appropriate and occasionally used in the past, has been superseded by "Mysticeti" (junior synonym). Mysticetes are also known as baleen whales because of the presence of baleen. These animals rely on their baleen plates to sieve plankton and other small organisms from the water. The term "baleen" (Middle English "baleyn, ballayne, ballien, bellane", etc.) is an archaic word for "whale", derived from the