How many baby North Atlantic right whales are in a litter?
A North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) usually gives birth to around 1 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 345 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 800 kg (1763.7 lbs) and measure 4.5 meter (14′ 10″). They are a member of the Balaenidae family (genus: Eubalaena). An adult North Atlantic right whale grows up to a size of 13.92 meter (45′ 9″).
To have a reference: Humans obviously usually have a litter size of one ;). Their babies are in the womb of their mother for 280 days (40 weeks) and reach an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″). They weight in at 62 kg (137 lbs), which is obviously highly individual, and reach an average age of 75 years.
The North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis, which means “good, or true, whale of the ice”) is a baleen whale, one of three right whale species belonging to the genus Eubalaena, all of which were formerly classified as a single species. Because of their docile nature, their slow surface-skimming feeding behaviors, their tendencies to stay close to the coast, and their high blubber content (which makes them float when they are killed, and which produced high yields of whale oil), right whales were once a preferred target for whalers.At present, they are among the most endangered whales in the world, and they are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act and Canada’s Species at Risk Act. There are about 400 individuals in existence in the western North Atlantic Ocean—they migrate between feeding grounds in the Labrador Sea and their winter calving areas off Georgia and Florida, an ocean area with heavy shipping traffic. In the eastern North Atlantic, on the other hand—with a total population reaching into the low teens at most—scientists believe that they may already be functionally extinct. Vessel strikes and entanglement in fixed fishing gear, which together account for nearly half of all North Atlantic right whale mortality since 1970, are their two greatest threats to recovery.
Other animals of the family Balaenidae
North Atlantic right whale is a member of the Balaenidae, as are these animals:
- Bowhead whale with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Southern right whale weighting around 23000 kilograms (50706.26 lbs)
Animals that share a litter size with North Atlantic right whale
Those animals also give birth to 1 babies at once:
- Gee’s golden langur
- Antillean fruit-eating bat
- Unstriped ground squirrel
- Formosan rock macaque
- Parti-coloured bat
- Northern bottlenose whale
- Western red colobus
- Diana monkey
- Scully’s tube-nosed bat
- Gracile Atlantic spiny rat
Animals with the same weight as a North Atlantic right whale
What other animals weight around 23000 kg (50706.26 lbs)?
- Bryde’s whale usually reaching 20000 kgs (44092.4 lbs)
- Gray whale usually reaching 27312.01 kgs (60212.6 lbs)
- Southern right whale usually reaching 23000 kgs (50706.26 lbs)
- Sei whale usually reaching 22103.13 kgs (48729 lbs)
Animals with the same size as a North Atlantic right whale
Also reaching around 13.92 meter (45′ 9″) in size do these animals:
- Gray whale gets as big as 11.84 meter (38′ 11″)
- Humpback whale gets as big as 12.87 meter (42′ 3″)
- Bowhead whale gets as big as 12.2 meter (40′ 1″)
- Bryde’s whale gets as big as 13.85 meter (45′ 6″)
- Sperm whale gets as big as 12.18 meter (40′ 0″)
- Southern right whale gets as big as 14.15 meter (46′ 6″)