Is it not astonishing to stand underneath a 15 meter long skeleton of a fin whale? It originates from a still young animal, which got lost in the Baltic Sea and stranded on the western shore of Rügen in 1825. The skeleton weighs circa 1 000 kilograms. And whales get even bigger! Double the size and 130 tons can be achieved by a blue whale. This correlates with the weight of 32 elephants or 200 cows. Therewith blue whales are the biggest and heaviest animals on Earth.

The fin whale - like the blue whale - belongs to the baleen whales. And these baleen plates, which serve to screen out microbes from the water, are well seen in the mighty upper jaw of the skeleton. An interesting peculiarity of this skeleton can be realized only through an attentive observation: two tiny appearing bones, which are situated behind the chest underneath the vertebrae. These are the remains of the formed back pelvis. They prove that the ancestors of the whales were four-footed terrestrial mammals. Also the displayed organs - wind-pipe, blood vessels and penis - are retrieved from this fin whale.

Baleen whales are not able to swallow larger prey. Different the toothed whales, the predators among the diversified "whale relatives". One vigorously toothed skull of the orca (killer whale) - hanging on the wall - creates awe from the observer. This animal was 7.50 meters long and stranded in 1851 close to Mukran on the Baltic Sea coast of Rügen.

Also the seven meter long bottle-nosed whale, whose skeleton is hanging on the left wall, stranded close to Stralsund - in 1993 on the island Hiddensee. It was scientifically studied in the MEERESMUSEUM.

It does not happen so rarely that whales get lost in the Baltic Sea and die here. This is shown by the map, displaying the places of discoveries. But there is also one whale species, which is indigenous in the Baltic Sea: The small harbor porpoise, which only achieves a length of 1.80 meter. A female harbor porpoise with a young is hanging as a cast on the wall.

On the opposite side there is a group of five dolphins installed. The thematic tableaus on the wall give a lot of details about whales - an overview about all existing species and something about the optimal adaption of these mammals (Whales are no fish!) to the habitat seawater.