Whales
gregladen | August 24, 2015We need to act urgently to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas pollution we humans create in order to slow down and eventually stop climate change. In the mean time we see case after case of something happening that seems unusual and that seems linked to global warming. We need not wait for the jury to return a verdict in every single case in order to act. We already know what many of the effects of climate change are, and we have a reasonably good idea of what effects will arise in the future. Even so, every now and then something happens that any reasonable person might guess is linked…
hrynyshyn | March 22, 2011James Delingpole's relationship with what is commonly understood by the term "journalism" is not readily apparent.
1. PLOS One publishes a peer-reviewed paper by some of the world's leading marine biologists with an interest in the effects of underwater noise pollution. The paper tests the idea that naval sonar could have an impact on whale behavior. It makes no mention of wind farms.
2. The Telegraph publishes a story, "Wind farms blamed for stranding of whales" citing the paper, which has the conveniently precise title of "Beaked Whales Respond to Simulated and Actual Navy Sonar."
4.…
jdupuis | June 25, 2010Sometimes it's only through humour that we can understand just how serious an issue is. This is one of those cases. Heartbreakingly sad yet somehow ringing very true, this one is from The Onion: Suffering Blue Whales Plead With Environmentalists To Let Them Go Extinct Already.
NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN--Claiming that their miserable lives had become too depressing to endure, the world's remaining blue whales surfaced Monday and desperately pleaded with environmentalists to immediately cease all conservation efforts so the species could "just be done with it and finally go extinct."
The planet's…
jgoldman | April 21, 2010
Figure 1: Humpback whale
The question is: what do you use to study the health of whales in the wild?
The answer is: not what you'd think.
Unlike smaller sea mammals like seals or sea lions, it is very hard to obtain blood samples from whales without first killing them.
Meet Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, from the Zoological Society of London. She studies whale health, but has had to rely on dead, stranded or captive animals for blood samples, which are hardly representative of whales in the wild.
Figure 2: Dr. Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse
So what's the next best thing to whale blood? Well, SNOT,…
grrlscientist | February 26, 2010tags: Tilikum, Tillikum, Tilly, Orcinus orca, Killer Whale, SeaWorld, Sea World, Orlando, Florida, whales, animals, news, behavior, streaming video
Are orcas too brainy for captive life? Should they all live only in "the wild"? This video is only the beginning of the debate .. what do you think?
ddobbs | January 29, 2010Hits of the week:
Savage Minds (with a spiffy website redesign) asks Why is there no Anthropology Journalism?
Jerry Coyne takes sharp exception to both a paper and a SciAm Mind Matters article by Paul Andrews and Andy Thomson arguing that depression might be an evolutionary adaptation. Dr. Pangloss punches back. (NB: 1. I was founding editor of Mind Matters, but no longer edit it, did not edit the Andrews/Thomson piece, and don't know any of these people. 2. While my recent Atlantic article presented an argument for how a gene associated with depression (the so-called SERT gene) might be…
razib | January 25, 2010In Bats and Whales, Convergence in Echolocation Ability Runs Deep:
..."However, it is generally assumed that most of these so-called convergent traits have arisen by different genes or different mutations. Our study shows that a complex trait -- echolocation -- has in fact evolved by identical genetic changes in bats and dolphins."
A hearing gene known as prestin in both bats and dolphins (a toothed whale) has picked up many of the same mutations over time, the studies show. As a result, if you draw a phylogenetic tree of bats, whales, and a few other mammals based on similarities in the…
edyong | January 25, 2010
Millions of years before humans invented sonar, bats and toothed whales had mastered the biological version of the same trick - echolocation. By timing the echoes of their calls, one group effortlessly flies through the darkest of skies and the other swims through the murkiest of waters. It's amazing enough that two such different groups of mammals should have evolved the same trick but that similarity isn't just skin deep.
The echolocation abilities of bats and whales, though different in their details, rely on the same changes to the same gene - Prestin. These changes have produced such…
razib | January 18, 2010Are Antarctic minke whales unusually abundant because of 20th century whaling?:
Severe declines in megafauna worldwide illuminate the role of top predators in ecosystem structure. In the Antarctic, the Krill Surplus Hypothesis posits that the killing of more than 2 million large whales led to competitive release for smaller krill-eating species like the Antarctic minke whale. If true, the current size of the Antarctic minke whale population may be unusually high as an indirect result of whaling. Here, we estimate the long-term population size of the Antarctic minke whale prior to whaling by…
bcohen | December 23, 2009(Ten Best of the Decade from Half of the World's Fair)
This series began with the kindness of a friend who agreed to let me ask him about his book about Barry Commoner, science, and modern environmentalism. It then spawned a series of 17 interviews with authors of books in science studies, environmental history, the history of science, and all combinations in between. Every one of them was enjoyable to do; every author was generous and insightful. I've been able to use some of these as thumbnail sketches of readings I use in class. In that, they stand as the best example of blogging as a…
gregladen | February 3, 2009An article released moments ago in PLoS ONE, by Gingerich et al., describes one of the more interesting fossil discoveries ever.
To cut right to the conclusion: We now have reason to believe that the proto-whale Maiacetus inuus, a true transitional form, gave birth on land, not in the water.
Artist's conception of male Maiacetus inuus with opaque skeleton overlay. Credit: John Klausmeyer and Bonnie Miljour, University of Michigan Museums of Natural History
Maiacetus inuus is a newly described member of a larger group of proto-cetids (proto-whales) that are believed to be largely aquatic…
gregladen | May 18, 2008How big is a blue whale?
A blue whale is so big that a person can swim through it's largest blood vessels. A blue whale is so big that there are cars smaller than its heart. The blue whale is the largest animal on earth, now or ever, as far as we know. Its tongue is as large as the largest land animal on the present day earth (elephant). Oh, and it can go faster than most ships.
A blue whale is so big that when it dies, it takes YEARS to rot. And it smells REALLY bad.
And that is why people are moving out of a certain neighborhood in Canada.
NAIL POND, Prince Edward Island - In…
bleimanb | December 19, 2007Japan is a country pretty much known for only one thing: being mean to whales. They eat whales for taste and curiousity and conduct "experiments" on whales for "Mengele street cred." But now, they have finally taken their twisted torture too far. The Daily Mail, Britain's most trusted source for news, reported today that a Japanese aquarium has PUT SANTA CLAUS HATS on two beluga whales who are being held hostage there, an act which has brought "laughter and cheers" from the aquarium's visitors. Just hold a moment and let that last part sink in...Yup, you heard me correctly. It would appear…