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Humpback Whale

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Humpback whale images (Megaptera novaeangliae) - stock photos, illustrations & facts of the most acrobatic whale with a beautiful song

We have the most comprehensive collection of humpback whale images in the world, from underwater to aerial shots, created by the world’s top professional wildlife photographers. We also have many pictures showing the animal’s various behaviors and anatomical features, including blowing, spouting, nursing, breaching, tail-slapping, pec-slapping, lobtailing, migrating in group, bubble-net feeding, baleen, skeletons, human interaction, etc. We are the best stock photo resource for high quality humpback whale images.

Kingdom: Animalia > Phylum: Chordata > Class: Mammalia > Order: Artiodactyla > Infraorder: Cetacea > Family: Balaenopteridae > Genus: Megaptera > Species: M. novaeangliae - Binomial name: Megaptera novaeangliae

Humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, are baleen whales, and are known for their complex and beautiful songs, and their incredibly long migrations. There are three distinct populations, North Pacific, North Atlantic, and Southern oceans, and they are thought to live up to 50 years.

Humpback whales breed and give birth in warm tropical waters in the winter, and then travel over 3,000 miles to cold oceans in the summer, taking nearly three months to complete the journey. In tropical waters they do not feed at all, but live off their fat layers, with young calves feeding from their mothers’ milk. In cold water they eat krill, plankton, and small fish, which they catch, by gulping in large quantities of ocean and expressing it out, catching the food in their baleen plates.

The whale’s song is long and very varied, and although both males and females vocalize, only males have been observed singing the complex songs in tropical waters. Whales within an area sing the same song, which is different from the song of whales from a different area.

Humpback whales can be up to 50 feet long. The flukes are deeply notched and have unique white patches which allows individuals to be identified, and can be up to 12 feet wide. The flippers are the largest of any whale. Humpback whales frequently have barnacles goring on its flippers and head.

The humpback whale may travel in large groups but will soon disband, except for mothers and calves who remain together. In their summer feeding grounds humpback whales will group together temporarily for cooperative bubble-net feeding, where members of a pod will form a circle and blow a wall of bubbles to trap the prey into a concentrated mass, which they can then eat.

Humpback whales are extremely acrobatic, with many activities, such as lobtailing (or tail-slapping), pectoral fin slapping, spyhopping, and very high breaches where they often spin around before crashing back into the ocean. They also dive deeply to around 600 feet, and can stay down for between 15 and 30 minutes. Humpback whales breathe through two blowholes, and will spout several times a minute.
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