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
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