Moby Dick (whale) (larger than any officially recorded sperm whale) and that Moby Dick is possibly the largest sperm whale that ever lived. Ahab tells the crew that the White Whale can be told because it has an unusual spout, a deformed jaw, three punctures in his right fluke and several harpoons embedded in his side from unsuccessful hunts. Yet Ishmael insists that what invested the whale with “natural terror” was that “unexampled, intelligent malignity” which he had shown in his assaults. When he fled before “exalting pursuers,” giving every symptom of alarm, he would suddenly turn round and stave their boats to
Whale shark Whale shark The whale shark ("Rhincodon typus") is a slow-moving, filter-feeding carpet shark and the largest known extant fish species. The largest confirmed individual had a length of and a weight of about . The whale shark holds many records for size in the animal kingdom, most notably being by far the largest living nonmammalian vertebrate. It is the sole member of the genus Rhincodon and the only extant member of the family Rhincodontidae which belongs to the subclass Elasmobranchii in the class Chondrichthyes. Before 1984 it was classified as "Rhiniodon" into Rhinodontidae. The whale shark is found in open