• List of cetaceans

Peer reviews

• 05 Apr 2024 – Narwhal (talk · edit · hist) has been put up for PR by Wolverine XI (t · c); see discussion

Articles to be merged

• 15 Jan 2024 – Narluga (talk · edit · hist) is proposed for merging to Monodontidae by FunkMonk (t · c); see discussion

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Cetacea articles by quality statistics

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Articles on almost every species have been started. Most species have their own article with the exception of mesoplodont whales (too little information known for separate articles) and humpback dolphins (the lack of consensus from the taxonomists makes difficult to know what species to choose). Better to do at the genus level to avoid passing judgment.

Bowhead whale[2] Temporal range: 0.2–0 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓ Early Pleistocene[3]
Size compared to an average human
Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)[4]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Infraorder:	Cetacea
Family:	Balaenidae
Genus:	Balaena
Species:	B. mysticetus
Binomial name
Balaena mysticetus Linnaeus, 1758
Bowhead whale range

Capitalisation of common names[edit]

Common names of cetaceans are written in sentence case. That is, the names are not capitalised except for the first word of a sentence and any proper names that are part of the common name. An example of the general use is bowhead whale. Examples of the inclusion of a proper name are North Pacific right whale (where "North Pacific" is a placename) and Bryde's whale (where Bryde was a person's name).

Prior to 15 February 2010 the common names were often written in title case, with every word capitalised. Most article titles have now been changed to sentence case per Talk:Bowhead whale#Requested move, but the text of some articles may still need to be changed. Discussion leading to the February 2010 policy change is archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cetaceans/Archive 4#Capitalisation.

Taxobox[edit]

Each species article should use a {{Taxobox}} (usage instructions) to list standard information about that species.

Images[edit]

A good image of an individual of the species in question should go in the {{Taxobox}}, but other descriptive images in-lined at relevant parts of the article are great. A size-comparison diagram should accompany it (as the image2 argument).

The JPEG format is preferable for photographs and PNG or SVG for diagrams. For public domain resources try the American National Oceanic and Atomospheric Administration, particularly the National Marine Fisheries Historic Image Collection.

Range maps[edit]

The basic template map is the world map without country borders. Others can be found at Wikipedia:Blank maps.

The blue colour shows where the species may be found and white is where it is absent.

• The grey colour has R:205 G:195 B:204 (#cdc3cc).
• The blue colour has R:0 G:0 B:255 (#0000ff)

Some maps give the range of multiple species and separate the two with different colours. There is no standard for this yet.

When editing a map, save it at full-quality so that no blurring occurs at the edge of the countries. Blurring makes further editing of the map more difficult because the "fill" function of many image editing programs doesn't work with the blurred edges.

What to include[edit]

Cetacean species articles can contain:

• a short introduction on the species, such as whether it is baleen or toothed
• physical characteristics such as their birth and adult sizes and weights for both sexes, colour, callosities, fin placement, size and shape, and how one may distinguish between that and other species
• biological elements such as life expectancy, gestation period, lactation period, speed, what they eat and interaction with other species
• population and distribution, changes thereof over time and conservation status
• human relationship with the species such as whaling, display in aquariums and whale-watching
• the discoverer/describer of the species, scientific names, taxonomy debates and English meaning of the scientific name

This list is neither exhaustive nor its items appropriate for every article. Some information is probably best described in an article outside a particular species e.g. baleen.

There are a huge number of books on the subject. The websites listed at cetacea may be useful for quick fact-verifying

• http://www.acsonline.org/ American Cetacean Society
• British Cetacean Site especially interesting is taxonomy
• Society for Marine Mammalogy's List of marine mammal species and subspecies should be consulted for recognized species and species names
• Cetacea.org homepage
• Walker's Mammals of the World Online - Cetaceans Archived 2004-10-11 at the Wayback Machine (Unfortunately, the online edition of Walker's Mammals of the World is no longer available. The print edition may still be purchased through the Johns Hopkins University Press.)
• Cetacean Society International

Free pictures[edit]

The NOAA has some great cetacean photos on the web. It is a U.S. Federal Government department, so its photos are public domain. They're on many websites and can be tricky to find through searches. Here are some examples:

• http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/read/protspp/RightWhale/page3.html
• http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/

Markup	Belongs...	Displays as
{{Cetacea}}	Bottom of article
{{Portal|Cetaceans}}	"See also" section on cetacean-related articles.
{{WikiProject Cetaceans}}	Top of article talk page	Cetaceans NA‑class (inactive) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cetaceans, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.CetaceansWikipedia:WikiProject CetaceansTemplate:WikiProject CetaceansCetaceans articles NA This article has been rated as NA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
{{User WPCETA}}	User page	This user is a member of WikiProject Cetaceans.
{{subst:WPCETA Welcome}}	Talk page of interested Wikipedians	Hello WikiProject Cetaceans. Thank you for your contribution to articles under the Cetaceans WikiProject! This project exists to enable interested users to collaborate on articles related to cetaceans. Should you be interested, there are many tasks where you can do to contribute: Here are some Cetaceans WikiProject tasks you can do. Patrol: Look through the Category:Cetaceans for recent changes Assessment: Unassessed cetacea articles and unknown-importance cetacea articles. Copyedit/Formatting: Bottlenose dolphin, Beached whale, Cetacea Expand: Hector's beaked whale, Ginkgo-toothed beaked whale, Shepherd's beaked whale, Archaeoceti, Cumberland Sound beluga, Blubber, Baiji, Humpback dolphin, Amazon river dolphin Verify: Spinner dolphin, Whale, Dolphin, Cetacea Stubs: Bolivian river dolphin (new species), Cephalorhynchus Images: Pictures of the baiji are wanted. We hope one of these will tempt you into considering joining this WikiProject. If you have any questions, feel free to ask one of our project contributors, or inquire on the project's talk page. Again, Thanks!
{{Paleo-whale-stub}}	Bottom of prehistoric stub article
{{Whale-stub}}	Bottom of non-prehistoric stub article
{{The Cetacean Barnstar|put your message here ~~~~}}	Add to another users talk page	The Cetacean Barnstar put your message here ~~~~

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