How to Use baleen in a Sentence
baleen
noun-
Back at the lab, the baleen plates were frozen, cleaned and measured.
—Jack Tamisiea, Scientific American, 8 Dec. 2021
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How did whales make the jump from using teeth to baleen?
—Jennifer S. Holland, Smithsonian, 1 Sep. 2017
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All baleen whales eat tiny krill, crustaceans found in all the world's oceans.
—David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 24 May 2017
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The sei whale is a type of baleen whale and prefers deep offshore waters.
—Mari A. Schaefer, Philly.com, 27 Apr. 2017
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But why baleen replaced teeth in the first place is still a bit of an unknown.
—Megan Schmidt, Discover Magazine, 29 Nov. 2018
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That’s because the large baleen whales became the target of whaling in the 1800s.
—Hope McKenney, Anchorage Daily News, 19 Feb. 2022
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As the water escapes, krill and small fish are snagged by the baleen’s bristles.
—Jack Tamisiea, Scientific American, 8 Dec. 2021
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In a yard off Stevenson Street, there is a steel pipe with baleen attached to it like palm fronds.
—Wyatt Williams, Harper's Magazine, 17 Aug. 2021
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The whales then push out the water and strain the fish through flexible comb-like structures in their mouths called baleen.
—Sarah Keartes, National Geographic, 30 July 2019
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Of course, today’s baleen whales include some of the largest animals of all time.
—Brian Switek, Scientific American Blog Network, 14 June 2017
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One of Reed’s daughters fixed the woman a cot to sleep on in the living room, beneath the baleen and dreamcatchers.
—Kyle Hopkins, ProPublica, 16 May 2019
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Seram, the largest island in the Maluku Island group, is near the migration routes for baleen whales.
—Fox News, 15 May 2017
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Feats like that allowed the giant baleen whales to thrive as the oceans changed while smaller baleen whales went extinct.
—Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 25 May 2017
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On the wall, a finger of whale baleen hung above a wooden snowshoe and an image of Jesus.
—Kyle Hopkins, ProPublica, 21 Nov. 2023
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Earliest mysticete from the Late Eocene of Peru sheds new light on the origin of baleen whales.
—Brian Switek, Scientific American Blog Network, 14 June 2017
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Krill is sort of a plankton soup – the primary food of humpbacks and other baleen whales.
—Sacbee, sacbee.com, 11 May 2017
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Then seemingly overnight, one type of whale – the toothless baleens – became huge.
—Seth Borenstein, The Christian Science Monitor, 24 May 2017
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Then seemingly overnight, one type of whale — the toothless baleens — became huge.
—Seth Borenstein, chicagotribune.com, 24 May 2017
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Several other kinds of whales can be found in the Gulf, but Rice’s whales are the only baleen whales living there year-round.
—Janet McConnaughey, orlandosentinel.com, 12 May 2021
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Worm-snails then filter-feed like baleen whales by pulling the mucus webs back into their mouths and straining the food through barbs on their tongues.
—National Geographic, 5 Apr. 2017
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Kanayurak uses sea glass, whale bones, ivory pieces and baleen to create her collages.
—Alena Naiden, Anchorage Daily News, 20 Aug. 2022
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As for the whale’s bristly baleen, these fibers and plates are flexible and resistant to fracture thanks to high levels of keratin.
—Sarah Keartes, National Geographic, 30 July 2019
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Both toothed and baleen (filter-feeding) whales are among the largest animals ever to exist.
—Jeremy Goldbogen, The Conversation, 12 Dec. 2019
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What sort of organism?: A cetacean related to today's baleen whales.
—Brian Switek, Scientific American Blog Network, 10 July 2017
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Small fish and krill are captured in the whale’s baleen — plates of keratin that hang from the top of the whale’s mouth resembling bristles on a toothbrush — and are swallowed into the whale’s stomach.
—New York Times, 20 Jan. 2022
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These included toothed species (dolphins, porpoises, orcas and sperm whales) that use sonar, and baleen species that don't.
—Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 25 Jan. 2010
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But some later lost their teeth, developing plates of bristle-like baleen in their mouths that’s used to filter small prey such as krill from the water.
—National Geographic, 19 Apr. 2018
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These feed by filtering small organisms such as krill from the water, using hairy plates (made of tissue called baleen) as sieves.
—The Economist, 26 Oct. 2017
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Over time, the filtering behavior would have caused whales to evolve baleen to fill in the gaps of their teeth before replacing them entirely.
—Megan Schmidt, Discover Magazine, 29 Nov. 2018
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People harvested the baleen, blubber, bone, meat, oil, and spermaceti.
—Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 26 Oct. 2023
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'baleen.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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