Toothed whale Toothed whale The toothed whales (systematic name Odontoceti) are a parvorder of cetaceans that includes dolphins, porpoises, and all other whales possessing teeth, such as the beaked whales and sperm whales. Seventy-three species of toothed whales (also called odontocetes) are described. They are one of two living groups of cetaceans, the other being the baleen whales (Mysticeti), which have baleen instead of teeth. The two groups are thought to have diverged around 34 million years ago (mya). Toothed whales range in size from the and vaquita to the and sperm whale. Several species of odontocetes exhibit sexual dimorphism, in that
Michael Bigg key discoveries of Dr. Bigg's team was that there were two types of killer whales living near the British Columbia coastline: "residents" which ate almost exclusively fish, and "transients" which hunted marine mammals and other warm-blooded prey. Resident and transient killer whale societies are separate, and the two types tend to avoid each other. The resident killer whale population of British Columbia and Washington is further divided into two "communities", one northern and one southern, that do not interbreed. Another discovery was that resident killer whales have one of the most stable social structures of any animal species. Pods of