Whales and Wiener Dogs

I came across this article about some recent research that’s been done on how modern toothless (blue whales, humpback whales) evolved from toothed whales somewhere between 5 million and 25 million years ago.

According to the web sheet:

This study focused on one gene, the enamelin gene, which expresses the enamelin protein. Mammals that do not express this protein, such as toothless whales, lack enamel on their teeth (if they have teeth at all), the hardest substance in the vertebrate body, which caps each individual tooth. Evolution predicts that in order to have evolved from toothed ancestors like the fossil record suggests, modern toothless whales must contain a copy of this gene in their genome, yet it will be inactive due to the slow build-up of detrimental mutations over time – ie. it will be a pseudogene.

And according to the leaders of the study - bingo!:

In our research we clearly see the parallel evolution of enamel loss in the fossil record and the molecular decay of the enamelin gene into a pseudogene in representatives of four different orders of mammals that have lost enamel.

Seems pretty straightforward stuff, unless you’re heavily vested in arguing evolution against creationism.
More from the web sheet:

Remember, if evolution did not occur to produce the diversity of life that we see today, and life was created by an intelligent designer, vestigial genes such as the enamelin gene in toothless whales should not exist in any genome. Intelligent design proponents and creationists like to skirt around the issue and claim that some or most pseudogenes are actually functional, but this is untrue. Even if some pseudogenes have gained a function, it still does not discount them as being vestigial remains from early generations.

I’ve got to admit that I’ve never before really been exposed to this level of detail when it comes to this particular debate. It seems, to me, completely ridiculous that these two camps would bother to deconstruct the beliefs of the other, to go back and forth, etc. trying to prove each other wrong. I always wonder if there are any creationists who argue that God is so powerful he could have created a 15 billion year old universe 5 thousand years ago…but, see, that’s how they get you.

Whales might not be considered people the way that human beings are considered people, but they might be more like the great apes than we think. Chimps and gorillas, e.g., possess self-awareness, feelings, and high-level cognitive powers. And according to a growing body of scientific research, so do certain whales and dolphins.

Most research into whale “personhood” has been done on bottlenose dolphins, sperm whales, humpback whales, and killer whales. In these species, scientists have seen “considerable social complexity and individual distinction.”

Scientists have developed a number of tests to identify the criteria for personhood; self-recognition, social behavior, tool use, and complex communication and language. For example, it’s been show that dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror, and it’s also been documented that a family of dolphins in Australia uses sponges to hunt.

And it appears that cetacean use of sound surpasses that of primates. Dolphins, humpback whales, and sperm whales are believe to “pass songs and codas between generations and individuals.” Some scientists also believe that some distinctive calls made by dolphins and whales are equivalent to names.

Read the whole article at Wired.

(click on the images to see them larger)

Last week, we went on a whale watching tour out of Provincetown, Mass. We saw around 2 dozen humpback whales feeding. It was whale soup out there. Sometimes you’d look up and see 3 - 5 whales feeding, blowing and/or diving.

Above are a couple pics my wife took. She pretty much snapped a few pictures and then said, “Forget it. I’m here to watch whales, not take pictures.” I’ve got a lot more video I need to edit together, but I’ll try to post some soon.

Also, a WAWD reader reports seeing 3 mother/calf humpback combos, 3 minkes, and a dozen or so finbacks on a trip out of Hyannis earlier this week.

And on your way out to Provincetown, be sure to stop and eat at Moby Dick’s in Wellfleet!

Once again, available art compels me to break my own rule about not posting on dead beached whale. I mean, seriously, look at the size of the tongue on this finback whale that washed up dead in Provincetown earlier in the week. Local officials say the swelling is due to decomposition gasses.

And apparently this has happened at least once before, see below photo from Alaska in 2007.

According to his official web sheet: “MIGALOO has survived the Japanese Whale slaughter in the Southern Ocean and has just cruised into Queensland waters.”

In case you don’t know who Migaloo is, he’s a real-life all white humpback whale that frequents the Queensland coast of Australia. He’s the only documented all-white adult humpback whale on the planet, and his name means “white fella” in the aboriginal tongue.

To almost no one’s surprise, the IWC meeting this week in Portugal turned out to be a complete waste of time. In fact, so much nothing was accomplished that the meeting actually wrapped a day early. The two sides - nations opposed to commercial whaling and pro-whaling nations (led by Japan, Norway, and Iceland) - agreed only to continue to disagree, giving themselves another twelve months to negotiate some sort of compromise.

During all this, Greenland, with support from Denmark, made a formal request to the IWC to hunt 10 humpback whales per year. The IWC dodged the issue by appointing a scientific committee to research Greenland’s request.

And the New York Times published an editorial on Sunday urging non-whaling nations to press harder than ever for a complete ban, saying that while many whale populations are recovering, they face a growing threat from other dangers like global warming, habitat loss, and commercial shipping and fishing. Their assertion that a ban on hunting is a vital component to the overall survival strategy of whales is a belief shared by many conservatonists.

For the first time ever, scientists have recorded the path that humpback whales take from the Australian coast to feeding grounds near Antarctica.

Using decidedly non-lethal means, Australian scientists tagged 16 whales near New South Wales and tracked their individual journeys for nearly six months. Said Aussie Environment Minister Peter Garrett, “Scientists have discovered that these whales from Australia’s east coast disperse more widely than previously thought and outside the area traditionally identified for this population by the International Whaling Commission.”

The tagging program is part of a $35M initiative designed to use non-lethal research as a way of influencing the International Whaling Commission’s reform agenda (i.e. to end whaling and the lethal research loophole).

An amateur with a handy cam has captured at least five male humpback whales engaging in “competitive group behavior” to impress a nearby female, in this case nearly pressing themselves up against the portholes of a submersible out of Lahaina, Maui.

The video is sort of annoying, but there are good parts throughout.

More news from the world of whales:

• All that footage the Australian Feds took from the Steve Irwin is safely back in the hands of Animal Planet…new season of Whale Wars premieres June 5 (PR Newswire)
• Here’s some footage of an underwater videographer getting hit in the head by a whale tail (Dive Photo Guide).
• If you can interpret the cartoon above, go here and be the first to figure it out (Toon Pool)
• Off all the things that are out there killing whales, rat poison isn’t one of them (KHON)
• Rachel McAdams has read a lot of books, but Moby Dick isn’t one of them (Oprah.com)

For several hours today, a humpback whale was seen in New York Harbor near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The whale did not appear to be injured or entangled.

It seems that the whale, nicknamed “‘Bernie” (by me), turned around once he saw Staten Island. The waters surrounding my home city have been full of exciting and unfamiliar objects this year - including jet airplanes.

According to the NOAA, it’s pretty much whale season out there right now - humpbacks, fins, rights, minkes.