In the frozen seas of the far northern latitudes dwells the bowhead whale.

Unlike other whales, which visit the polar regions during the warmer months, this immense marine mammal, also known as the arctic whale, permanently resides in the frigid waterways around the North Pole. But that’s not their only special trait. Bowhead whales are the world’s longest living mammals, and they also have the world’s largest mouth.

Bowhead whales were once thought to have a lifespan of 60 to 70 years, but since the 1990s, evidence has surfaced that they can grow far older than we’d previously thought. In 2007, Inuit hunters caught a bowhead whale with the tip of an explosive lance embedded deep within its neck blubber. The lance was produced by the New Bedford Whaling Company in Massachusetts in 1890, which meant the whale itself was between 115 and 130 years old. Other bowhead whales are estimated to have been over 200 years old, making them the longest living mammals in the world.

On top of that, bowhead whales have the largest mouth in the world, and with it, they have the longest baleen.

Their mouth and head is 1/3 of their body size, and their baleen is 9.8 feet (3 meters) long. They use their huge mouths and long baleen to filter planktonic organisms out of the arctic seas, and they also use their massive heads to crack through ice to breathe. Inuits have reported bowhead whales breaking through 24 inches (60 centimeters) of ice.

If all those adaptations weren’t enough, bowhead whales also have the thickest blubber of any animal, averaging at 17 to 20 inches (43 to 50 centimeters) thick. This allows them to thrive in the bone-chilling Arctic Ocean year round.

Watch these incredible whales in action in the video below.

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