Whale oil is the oil obtained from the blubber of various species of whales of the genus Balaena, as B. mysticetus, Greenland or right whale (northern whale-oil), B. australis (southern whale-oil), Balaenoptera longimana, Balaenoptera borealis (Finback oil, Finner whale-oil, Humpback oil). The orca or killer whale, and the beluga or white whale, also yield whale-oils. Train-oil proper is the northernwhale-oil, but this term has been applied to all blubber oils, and in Germany, to all marine animal oilsfish-oils, liver oils, and blubber oils. The most important whale-oil is sperm or spermaceti oil, yielded by the sperm whales. Blubber is a thick layer of insulating fat found under the skin of cetaceans and various other animals living in extremely cold climates (seals, walruses). ... Whales are the largest species of exclusively aquatic placental mammals, members of the order Cetacea, which also includes dolphins and porpoises. ... Species  Balaena mysticetus  Eubalaena australis  Eubalaena glacialis  Eubalaena japonica Northern Right Whale range Southern Right Whale range The right whales are marine mammals belonging to the family Balaenidae. ... The Italian word orca (sometimes translated as orc) also designates a monster in Ariostos Orlando Furioso Binomial name Orcinus orca Linnaeus, 1758 Orca range (in blue) The orca (Orcinus orca), commonly known as the killer whale, and often called the grampus, is the largest member of the oceanic dolphin... The term White Whale has several meanings. ... Binomial name Physeter macrocephalus Linnaeus, 1758 Sperm Whale range The Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) is the largest of the toothed whales and is the largest toothed animal in the world. ...

Whale-oil varies in color from a bright honey yellow to a dark brown, according to the condition of the blubber from which it has been extracted. At best it has a rank fishy odour, and the darker the color the more disagreeable the smell. With lowering of the temperature stearin, accompanied with a small proportion of spermaceti, separates from the oil, and a little under the freezing point nearly the whole of these constituents may be crystallized out. When separated and pressed, this deposit is known as whale tallow, and the oil from which it is removed is distinguished as pressed whale-oil; this, owing to its limpidity, is sometimes passed as sperm-oil. Tallow is rendered beef or mutton fat (suet). ...

The first principal use of whale oil was as an illuminant in lamps and as candle wax. Whale-oil later came to be used in oiling wools for combing and other uses. It was the first of all oils — animal or mineral — to achieve commercial viability.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...