Histoire Naturelle, Cetaces. Baleine a Bec. Pl. 4.

Title

Histoire Naturelle, Cetaces. Baleine a Bec. Pl. 4.

Description

Pl. 4: ‘Histoire Naturelle, Cetaces. - Baleine a Bec.', shows the whale or humpback whale from natural history in seven figures. This plate is from ‘Cetologie’ of the ‘Tableau Encyclopedique et Methodique ...’ by M. L'Abbe Bonnaterre. Engraved by Bernard. Published by Panckoucke.

ca. 1789

Artist

Bonnaterre (1752-1804)

Abbé Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre (1752-1804) was a French naturalist who contributed sections on cetaceans, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects to the Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique. He is also notable as the first scientist to study the feral child Victor of Aveyron. Bonnaterre was priest in the Rouergue and professor at the central school of Rhodes. The publisher Panckoucke assigned him to contribute to the Encyclopédie méthodique, dealing with mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes and insects. He composed an extensive text for the part on fishes and availed himself of the works of most of the earlier authors and collected drawings of more than 400 species.

Historical Description

Whales are an order of mammals with around 90 species that live exclusively in the water. There are two suborders: the baleen whales, which feed on plankton as filter feeders and are among the largest animals in evolutionary history, and the predatory toothed whales, which also include the dolphin family. In a narrower linguistic sense, the term “cetacean” can include the species known as “dolphins”, so that the entire order is also referred to as “whales and dolphins”. With the exception of individual dolphins and the various groups of river dolphins, cetaceans live in the sea. This group of mammals made the transition to aquatic life around 50 million years ago in the early Eocene. Whales are closely related to even-toed ungulates. The populations of many whale species have declined significantly as a result of environmental pollution, fishing and industrial whaling.