Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales are so similar that researchers have debated whether or not they are simply two populations of the same species.

Baird's beaked whales were first described in 1883 by American zoologist Leonhard Stejneger based on a skull from a specimen that had been found stranded on the eastern shore of Bering Island the previous fall.

The species was named after Spencer Fullerton Baird, the then Secretary of the Smithsonian.

[3] A few months after Stejneger's description was published, Swedish zoologist August Wilhelm Malm published a description of a new species in the Beradius genus, Beradius vegae, based on a portion of a skull found on Bering Island in 1879.

The species occurs primarily in the North Pacific Ocean, where it is a deep-water cetacean, often frequenting depths between 1,000 and 3,000 m (3,280 and 9,840 ft) in its search for prey.