Cryptid whale Another argued hypothesis is that that pod was part of an inbred population, which led to the mutation. Another possibility is that Quoy and Gaimard observed specimens which were neither deformed nor members of an unknown species or population, but rather mistaken identification of a pair of beaked whales that, by perspective, appeared to be one single creature. The high-finned sperm whale, or the high-finned cachalot, is an alleged variant or relative of the known sperm whale, "Physeter macrocephalus", with an unusually tall dorsal fin from the North Atlantic. The physician Sir Robert Sibbald, in 1687, described an alleged stranded
Mesoplodont whale what effect this has on the population. Longman's beaked whale ("Indopacetus pacificus", also known as the Indo-Pacific beaked whale or the tropical bottlenose whale) was originally assigned to "Mesoplodon", but Joseph Curtis Moore placed it in its own genus, "Indopacetus", a taxonomic assignment which has been followed by all researchers. Two extinct species of "Mesoplodon" are known, "M. posti" and "M. slangkopi". Mesoplodont whale Mesoplodont whales are fifteen species of toothed whale in the genus Mesoplodon, making it the largest genus in the cetacean order. Two species were described as recently as 1991 (pygmy beaked whale) and 2002 (Perrin's beaked