#ontogeny

The colour-changing Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris)

I’ve always had a soft spot for Cuvier’s beaked whales, which their recent dive records only deepened. However, during the creating of their illustrations, I learned so much more about them. I thought I was familiar with their markings, and originally I had meant to paint just two: an adult male and female. Until my client corrected me that I had, in fact, painted a subadult and a young adult male, instead of the truly mature old male he’d had envisioned. And so two illustrations became four, and in the end I think they work together very nicely to show the “Cuvier gradient”. I had no idea adult females were so light-backed - I had always assumed these to be males. And the ghostly old males were an especially big surprise. Apparently this is a totally normal and common colour pattern for mature males, which is simply not often represented in illustrations of the species. Really cool to learn more about this species, so I just had to make a proper poster out of it. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting too!