Sato's beaked whale

Sato's beaked whale; Temporal range: Middle Miocene to present, 11.5–0 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
	Illustration of Berardius minimus (black scale bar is 1 metre [3.3 ft])
	Size compared to an average human
Conservation status
	; Near Threatened (IUCN 3.1)
	CITES Appendix I (CITES)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Infraorder:	Cetacea
Family:	Ziphiidae
Genus:	Berardius
Species:	B. minimus
Binomial name
	Berardius minimus; Yamada, Kitamura & Matsuishi, 2019

Sato's beaked whale (Berardius minimus; Japanese: Kurotsuchi-kujira) is a little-known species of four-toothed whale, a type of beaked whale.^[3]

Description

Sato's beaked whale is one of the poorly distinguished species in the genus Berardius. It was distinguished from Arnoux's and Baird's beaked whale in 2019 on the basis of mtDNA differences.^[4]^[5] It generally has a short beak (~4% body length). While other four-toothed whales are generally grey with long linear scars, kurotsuchi-kujira usually have few linear scars, so that the dark, smooth skin contrasts highly with round, white scars of about 5 cm diameter, most likely from cookiecutter shark bites.^[5] The common name for Berardius minimus is in recognition of Hal Sato, a Hokkaido-based researcher whose photographs of the whales helped to distinguish this species from other beaked whales (note the image credit in Figure 1 and Figure 2 from the Yamada et. al. paper ^[5]).^[6]^[7]

Distribution

The species' distribution, based on genetic samples from strandings only, is believed to include the southern Sea of Okhotsk north of Hokkaido, the Commander Islands, and the southeastern Bering Sea.^[5]

Conservation

Although very little is known about the ecology and populations of Sato's beaked whale, the IUCN has assigned the species a classification of Near threatened based on its estimated low population numbers.^[1]