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Cetacea   Listen
noun
Cetacea  n. pl.  (Zool.) An order of marine mammals, including the whales. Like ordinary mammals they breathe by means of lungs, and bring forth living young which they suckle for some time. The anterior limbs are changed to paddles; the tail flukes are horizontal. There are two living suborders:
(a)
The Mysticete or whalebone whales, having no true teeth after birth, but with a series of plates of whalebone (see Baleen.) hanging down from the upper jaw on each side, thus making a strainer, through which they receive the small animals upon which they feed.
(b)
The Denticete, including the dolphins and sperm whale, which have teeth. Another suborder (Zeuglodontia) is extinct. The Sirenia were formerly included in the Cetacea, but are now made a separate order.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cetacea" Quotes from Famous Books



... about the island till evening, as its appearance was very inviting. Its FAUNA and FLORA, however, were poor in the extreme. The only specimens of quadrupeds, birds, fish and cetacea were a few wild boars, stormy petrels, albatrosses, perch and seals. Here and there thermal springs and chalybeate waters escaped from the black lava, and thin dark vapors rose above the volcanic soil. Some of these springs were very hot. John Mangles held his thermometer in one of them, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... amid the eternal night of the depths of ocean, while vegetable life, which is so dependent on the periodic action of the solar rays, is most prevalent on continents. The mass of vegetation on the Earth very far exceeds that of animal organisms; for what is the volume of all the large living Cetacea and Pachydermata when compared with the thickly-crosded colossal trunks of trees, of from eight to twelve feet in diameter, which fill the vast forests covering the tropical region of South America, between the Orinoco, the Amazon, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... effected, is described under that genus. Anelasma has its sub-globular peduncle deeply embedded in the flesh of Northern Sharks; and I have seen instances of the basal end of the peduncle of Conchoderma aurita, being sunk into the skin of Cetacea; in the same way the point of the peduncle in the male of Ibla, is generally deeply embedded in the sack of the female. I believe in all these cases, the cementing substance affects and injures the corium or true skin of the animal on which the creature is parasitic, whilst the surrounding parts, ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... was lifted from my brain, which had before been crushing it, and my temples grew suddenly cool. A spiracle had developed at the apex of my cranium, and I exuded water through a cavity or 'blow-hole' in the top of my head, like the cetacea ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... and some of the lizards of our own day are aquatic, but none live constantly in the ocean, as do the cetacea amongst beasts. This was, however, by no means always the case. In the secondary period just adverted to, huge marine reptiles (Ichthyosauria and Plesiosauria) lorded it over the other then inhabitants of the deep, and presented some noteworthy resemblances to the whales and porpoises ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various



Words linked to "Cetacea" :   animal order, cetaceous, family Monodontidae, Odontoceti, order Cetacea, subclass Eutheria, Monodontidae



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