page_title: Whale
section_title: In myth, literature and art
hierarchical_section_title: Whale / Relationship with humans / In myth, literature and art
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustrations of Baron von Münchhausen by Gustave Doré
context_page_description: Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. They are an informal grouping within the infraorder Cetacea, usually excluding dolphins and porpoises. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, having diverged about 40 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales and toothed whales, are thought to have split apart around 34 million years ago. Whales consist of eight extant families: Balaenopteridae, Balaenidae, Cetotheriidae, Eschrichtiidae, Monodontidae, Physeteridae, Kogiidae, and Ziphiidae.
  Whales are fully aquatic, open ocean creatures, and feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres and 135 kilograms dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres and 190 metric tons blue whale, which is the largest known creature that has ever lived. The sperm whale is the largest toothed predator on earth. Several species exhibit sexual dimorphism, in that the females are larger than males.
context_section_description: As marine creatures that reside in either the depths or the poles, humans knew very little about whales over the course of history; many feared or revered them. The Vikings and various arctic tribes revered the whale as they were important pieces of their lives. In Inuit creation myths, when 'Big Raven', a deity in human form, found a stranded whale, he was told by the Great Spirit where to find special mushrooms that would give him the strength to drag the whale back to the sea and thus, return order to the world. In an Icelandic legend, a man threw a stone at a fin whale and hit the blowhole, causing the whale to burst. The man was told not to go to sea for twenty years, but during the nineteenth year he went fishing and a whale came and killed him.
  Whales played a major part in shaping the art forms of many coastal civilizations, such as the Norse, with some dating to the Stone Age. Petroglyphs off a cliff face in Bangudae, South Korea show 300 depictions of various animals, a third of which are whales. Some show particular detail in which there are throat pleats, typical of rorquals. These petroglyphs show these people, of around 7,000 to 3,500 B.C.E. in South Korea, had a very high dependency on whales.
  The Pacific Islanders and Australian Aborigines viewed whales as bringers of good and joy. One exception is French Polynesia, where, in many parts, cetaceans are met with great brutality.
  In Vietnam and Ghana, among other places, whales hold a sense of divinity. They are so respected in their cultures that they occasionally hold funerals for beached whales, a throwback to Vietnam's ancient sea-based Austro-Asiatic culture. The god of the seas, according to Chinese folklore, was a large whale with human limbs.
  Whales have also played a role in sacred texts such as the Bible. It mentions whales in Genesis 1:21, Job 7:12, and Ezekiel 32:2. The "leviathan" described at length in Job 41:1-34 is generally understood to refer to a whale. The "sea monsters" in Lamentations 4:3 have been taken by some to refer to marine mammals, in particular whales, although most modern versions use the word "jackals" instead. The story of Jonah being swallowed by a great fish is told both in the Qur'an and in the Bible. A medieval column capital sculpture depicting this was made in the 12th century in the abbey church in Mozac, France. The Old Testament contains the Book of Jonah and in the New Testament, Jesus mentions this story in Matthew 12:40.
  In 1585, Alessandro Farnese, 1585, and Francois, Duke of Anjou, 1582, were greeted on his ceremonial entry into the port city of Antwerp by floats including "Neptune and the Whale", indicating at least the city's dependence on the sea for its wealth.
  In 1896, an article in The Pall Mall Gazette popularised a practice of alternative medicine that probably began in the whaling town of Eden, Australia two or three years earlier. It was believed that climbing inside a whale carcass and remaining there for a few hours would relief symptoms of rheumatism.
  Whales continue to be prevalent in modern literature. For example, Herman Melville's Moby Dick features a "great white whale" as the main antagonist for Ahab, who eventually is killed by it. The whale is an albino sperm whale, considered by Melville to be the largest type of whale, and is partly based on the historically attested bull whale Mocha Dick. Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories includes the story of "How the Whale got in his Throat". Niki Caro's film the Whale Rider has a Māori girl ride a whale in her journey to be a suitable heir to the chieftain-ship. Walt Disney's film Pinocchio features a showdown with a giant whale named Monstro at the end of the film. Alan Hovhaness' orchestra And God Created Great Whales included the recorded sounds of humpback and bowhead whales. Léo Ferré's song "Il n'y a plus rien" is an example of biomusic that begins and ends with recorded whale songs mixed with a symphonic orchestra and his voice.
caption: Illustration by Gustave Doré of Baron Munchausen's tale of being swallowed by a whale. While the Biblical Book of Jonah refers to the Prophet Jonah being swallowed by "a big fish", in later derivations that "fish" was identified as a whale.
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