Danube bleak Danube bleak The Danube bleak or Caspian shemaya ("Alburnus chalcoides") is a species of freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae. It is found in Iran, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The Danube bleak is an elongate slim fish which can reach but a more normal size is 15 to 30 centimetres (6 to 12 in). There are 57 to 70 scales along the lateral line. The abdomen is compressed into a keel and the posterior end of this has no scales. The dorsal fin has eight to nine
Common minke whale dwarf form in the Southern Hemisphere. This species is known in the fossil record from the Pliocene epoch to the Quaternary period (age range: 3.6 million years ago to present day). The origins of the species' common name are obscure. One of the first references to the name came in Henrik Johan Bull's account of his 1893–95 voyage to the Antarctic, when he mentioned catching a small whale "called in the Arctic language a Mencke whale, after a German who accompanied Mr. Foyn on some of his voyages." According to the British writer John Guille Millais ("The mammals of Great