ArticleThe Journal of experimental biology2021
Scaling of oscillatory kinematics and Froude efficiency in baleen whales.
Article in The Journal of experimental biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- ENHYDROSS: A New Mechanistic Model Supports the Trans-Oceanic Dispersal Capability of Terrestrial Vertebrates.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Energetic benefits of resting behaviour in humpback whale mother-calf pairs revealed by biologging and UAS-photogrammetry.Conservation physiology · 2026Article
- Life in the slowest lane: Feeding allometry lowers metabolic rate scaling in the largest whales.Science advances · 2025Article
- Closing the air gap: the use of drones for studying wildlife ecophysiology.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Reassessment of the possible size, form, weight, cruising speed, and growth parameters of the extinct megatooth shark,Palaeontologia electronica (Online) · 2025Article
- Solitary humpback whales manufacture bubble-nets as tools to increase prey intake.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Targeting fin whale conservation in the North-Western Mediterranean Sea: insights on movements and behaviour from biologging and habitat modelling.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Spin-leap performance by cetaceans is influenced by moment of inertia.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Universal wing- and fin-beat frequency scaling.PloS one · 2024Article
- Scaling the tail beat frequency and swimming speed in underwater undulatory swimming.Nature communications · 2023Review
- Downsized: gray whales using an alternative foraging ground have smaller morphology.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Minke whale feeding rate limitations suggest constraints on the minimum body size for engulfment filtration feeding.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Shaped by Their Environment: Variation in Blue Whale Morphology across Three Productive Coastal Ecosystems.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Large size in aquatic tetrapods compensates for high drag caused by extreme body proportions.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Fast and Furious: Energetic Tradeoffs and Scaling of High-Speed Foraging in Rorqual Whales.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Round-trip migration and energy budget of a breeding female humpback whale in the Northeast Atlantic.PloS one · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 7 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
High efficiency lunate-tail swimming with high-aspect-ratio lifting surfaces has evolved in many vertebrate lineages, from fish to cetaceans. Baleen whales (Mysticeti) are the largest swimming animals that exhibit this locomotor strategy, and present an ideal study system to examine how morphology and the kinematics of swimming scale to the largest body sizes. We used data from whale-borne inertial sensors coupled with morphometric measurements from aerial drones to calculate the hydrodynamic performance of oscillatory swimming in six baleen whale species ranging in body length from 5 to 25 m (fin whale, Balaenoptera physalus; Bryde's whale, Balaenoptera edeni; sei whale, Balaenoptera borealis; Antarctic minke whale, Balaenoptera bonaerensis; humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae; and blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus). We found that mass-specific thrust increased with both swimming speed and body size. Froude efficiency, defined as the ratio of useful power output to the rate of energy input ( Sloop, 1978), generally increased with swimming speed but decreased on average with increasing body size. This finding is contrary to previous results in smaller animals, where Froude efficiency increased with body size. Although our empirically parameterized estimates for swimming baleen whale drag were higher than those of a simple gliding model, oscillatory locomotion at this scale exhibits generally high Froude efficiency as in other adept swimmers. Our results quantify the fine-scale kinematics and estimate the hydrodynamics of routine and energetically expensive swimming modes at the largest scale.
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