Whale and predatory. Odontocetes, as a whole, mostly feed on fish and cephalopods, and then followed by crustaceans and bivalves. All species are generalist and opportunistic feeders. Mysticetes, as a whole, mostly feed on krill and plankton, followed by crustaceans and other invertebrates. A few are specialists. Examples include the blue whale, which eats almost exclusively krill, the minke whale, which eats mainly schooling fish, the sperm whale, which specialize on squid, and the grey whale which feed on bottom-dwelling invertebrates. The elaborate baleen "teeth" of filter-feeding species, mysticetes, allow them to remove water before they swallow their planktonic food by
Blue whale Naturae" of 1758, would have known this and may have intended the ironic double meaning. Herman Melville called this species "sulphur-bottom" in his novel "Moby-Dick" (1851) due to an orange-brown or yellow tinge on the underparts from diatom films on the skin. Other common names for the blue whale have included "Sibbald's rorqual" (after Sibbald, who first described the species), the "great blue whale" and the "great northern rorqual". These names have now fallen into disuse. The first known usage of the term "blue whale" was in Melville's "Moby-Dick", which only mentions it in passing and does not specifically attribute