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There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written (smithsonianmag.com)
259 points by spking on Feb 18, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 103 comments



Moby dick's kin the sperm whales are incredibly interesting. One of their remarkable ability is to dive deep, fast and long.

Among all free diving warm blooded animals they go the deepest. They dive to depths 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whales. The blue whale is the largest known animal to have ever inhabited the earth.

To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is a picture http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg It needs to be magnified for perspective and for the little surprise at the bottom.

It is interesting how they manage to hold their breath for so long and yet manage to survive the bends (decompression sickness).

The whales are seriously challenging our assumptions about animal intelligence, empathy, society, culture and language. For a long time we believed that the primates were at the top. Search Ted talks and youtube for dolphin intelligence, dont miss the Attenborough ones. For lack of a better word they are just amazing.

Dolphins are for example known to build difficult to make toys (air bubble vortex rings) just to entertain themselves.

They have to discover how to make it. Sometimes they can be quite possessive, they would break the toy if someone not so knowledgeable wants to play with it. Once a dolphin figures it out how to make one, his/her peers eventually figure it out too. So it kind of spreads within a group like fashion. This behavior has been observed both in captivity and in the wild.

Dolphins in captivity try to imitate us and seem to have no trouble mapping our body parts to theirs. A story goes that a scientist observing an young dolphin from an underwater portal had blown a cloud of cigarette smoke at it. The dolphin promptly went to the mother and did the same to the scientist with milk ! It is now strongly believed that they call each other by name. They try to imitate human speech which takes enormous effort on their part because unlike for example parrots their vocal tract is not conducive for this at all. People believe this to be an indication of their strong desire to communicate with us.

And they originated from ungulates: hoofed warm blooded animals. It came as a surprise to me that that there were hoofed carnivorous animals.


It is interesting how they manage to hold their breath for so long

Large blood capacity for storing oxygen, I think. Whale beef is very red.

and yet manage to survive the bends (decompression sickness)

Well they don't breathe down there as human divers do. The excess nitrogen pressed into the blood is not more than what the lungs can take out again when rising.


Worth noting is the constant weight [1] free-diving record is currently 128m (~420 feet)[2] - the human body is also capable of incredible things.

[1] The athlete has to dive to the depth following (but not using) a guide line. The ‘Constant Weight’ refers to the fact that the athlete is not allowed to drop any diving weights during the dive.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-diving#Depth_disciplines


> Whale beef

I'm sure you meant "meat"

> is very red.

Indeed, it's almost black.


Why not "beef"? They're called cows, bulls and calfs after all.


The word 'beef' entered the English language following the Norman invasion in 1066. It's a word with Latin roots, but came to English via French.

Consider the dichotomy between sheep & mutton, or pig & pork. In all instances, the word referring to the animal has "old English", or Anglo Saxon roots. Likewise, the word referring to the meat is Latin via French.

This linguistic gap may have its roots in social divisions. In the years following the Norman invasion, the upper class spoke French. They also consumed most of the meat.

The conquered, who by and large did a lot of the agricultural work & raised the livestock, spoke Anglo Saxon ("old English").

Regardless of etymology, though, beef doesn't refer to generic 'meat'.


Yeah, almost all words for meat in English come from the word for the same animal in French.

  * Beef from Boeuf
  * Mutton from Mouton
  * Pork from porc
  * etc...


> Yeah, almost all words for meat in English come from the word for the same animal in French.

That doesn't apply to doner kebabs.


It's funny, In Spanish we don't have an equivalent of "beef", we use the word for meat "carne", but we have the anglicism "bife" (from beef) mostly used in South America, or "bistec" (from beefsteak) mostly used in Central and North America.


I thought the word "vaca" meant beef?


It has a more specific connotation of cow and can mean the edible flesh derived from a cow.


http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/b%C5%93uf boeuf is french for beef


I think we're in agreement.

In French, however, boeuf can also refer to the animal.


As it can in English ("one beef, two beeves").


Sounds anachronistic. I can't imagine going to a farm and inquiring about their "herd of beeves".


"Beeves" is a little archaic, and if you were to poll most ranchers and traders today, they'd probably use "beefs." But it's still acceptable, and it hasn't completely fallen out of usage. (Nor has referring to a cow as a "beef" fallen out of usage, especially in the livestock trade. It's convenient to refer to a cow bred for consumption as a "beef," to differentiate it from a cow bred for dairy.)


"Beef" in the second case is probably short for 'beef cow,' just like 'dairy' is going to be short for 'dairy cow,' not some weird anachronistic usage (unless the Normans once called cows 'dairies.')


Strangely enough, there's actually an anachronistic usage at the heart of it all. The word "beef" came, originally, from the Norman-French "beuf" (precursor of the modern French "boeuf"), from the Latin "bov," which referred to the animal, not the animal's meat.

"Beef" started switching meaning from the animal to the meat because the meat was something only upper-class, Norman-descended Englishmen could afford. They had less experience with cows in the field, and more experience with cows as slices of meat on a plate. So the snootier, upper-crust "beef" came to be used in the context of food, while the Old English, working-class "cow" was still used by the actual farmers in the fields, who were dealing primarily with the animals. Merchants and middlemen, who dealt primarily in the meat but also in the livestock, adopted the more aspirational "beef" to refer to both. This usage was common until as recently as about 100 years ago. There are probably few people around today who'd call a cow "a beef," though there are still people who'd refer to a herd of cows (or any quantity on a market) as a "beef herd," or a "herd of beef."

I'm not going to go out on a limb and claim that "beef" is common, modern usage when referring to the animal. (And "beeves" is now so uncommon as to sound funny to the modern ear.) But the usage is not entirely extinct, and in instances when differentiating beef from dairy, it's moderately useful.


More likely they would say "head", as in "two head of cattle". In all my childhood days on the farm, I don't think I ever heard the word "beefs", much less "beeves". Usage of the latter would likely get you a look as if you had come from back east.


Yeah, I think the rancher would direct you to the nearest apiary, perhaps gently suggesting that the proper collective noun is "swarm of bees"


Well, it hasn't been in common use for, what, 400 years? But it's a perfectly cromulent usage.


Beef is the culinary name of bovine meat[0]. Calling whale meat beef is roughly equivalent to calling cow meat "pork".

[0] and afaik culinary names come from the corresponding animal's name in french: beef comes from boeuf (~ox, a castrated bos taurus male), pork from porc, veal is veau, mutton is mouton and venison is venaison (replaced by "gibier" in modern french).


Calling whale meat beef is roughly equivalent to calling cow meat "pork"

Yes. But I didn't. I called whale meat whale beef. That would be more like calling cow meat cow pork.


Technically correct, the best kind of correct.


Why is this a discussion?


We're a pedantic bunch. I've long noted the tendency of people to eviscerate a casual comment in an online conversation just because it does not extend to encyclopedic thoroughness. Elsewhere I was just upbraided for failing to note that Switzerland was arguably(!) not independent for 0.6% of its 800 year history.


People found it an interesting topic and started discussing it.


You're right, this conversation is useless. Let's get back to pragmatically discussing how old whales are.


OK. But does whale meat have a culinary term? Do the Japanese, Norwegians or Icelanders have a term for it, that is not a literal 'whale meat'?

While on the topic- why does english have a term for most domestic meats except for 'lamb'. Lamb is lamb, while most other non-game meats have a culinary term.


The Faroe Islanders have it: tvøst (pronounced like tvirst). Norwegians and Danes don't.


Mutton is an english language term for some to most lamb meats, depending on your area.


"Chicken" is the same.


xkcd Lakes and Oceans: https://xkcd.com/1040/


That Kola borerole is a really interresting thing...

Russians are awesome :D


In case you didn't see the recent XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1330/


If you like cetaceans, I strongly recommend Inside Nature's Giants s1e2 (Fin Whale) and s3special2 (Sperm Whale).

s3special (Giant Squid) is also an interestingly related topic. And so are pretty much all other episodes.)

> yet manage to survive the bends (decompression sickness).

But still get it, I remember a report of sperm whale bones being full of holes from nitrogen bubbles.


Another data point to imagine the depth: USS Thresher imploded at a depth of 1,300–2,000 ft. The implosion took 0.1 seconds. That was a ship of ~3500 short tons of mass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_%28SSN-593%29


The Thresher eventually sank to 8400 feet.

According to this article:

http://www.navytimes.com/article/20130404/NEWS/304040021/50-...

the Thresher likely imploded after sinking to 2400 feet, "the water-ram produced by the initial breaching of the Thresher's pressure hull at 2,400 feet entered the pressure hull with a velocity of about 2,600 mph"

129 crew died, it was the worst submarine disaster in history (also the first nuclear submarine to have sunk).


the '10% only' makes me wonder if Elon Musk has ever been interested into deep sea instead of mars-deep space. Also, Cameron is a monster : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepsea_Challenger#Challenger_... .


> If the ballast weight release system fails, stranding the craft on the seafloor, a backup galvanic release is designed to corrode in salt water in a set period of time, allowing the sub to automatically surface.

Not much to say about this other than that's particularly elegant.


Beside very reassuring, yes it is. Secure + good sense.


ok I'll bite - what is the writing at the bottom of the picture?


It's a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu".


I’m guessing it’s some variant of “Ia ia ia, Cthulhu f’tagn!”


Took me time to understand it wasn't unicode error but cthulhu runes. Well done.


At first I thought the lurker in the shadows was a smudge on my monitor.


> People believe this to be an indication of their strong desire to communicate with us.

I'd desperately try to reason with my captors too!


As regards origination from ungulates: More recent data suggests origination from artiodactyls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans#Earliest...


>The blue whale is the largest known animal to have ever inhabited the earth.

Arguably the heaviest, most likely not the largest.


Which is the largest then? Honest question, everything I've ever read says that it's the blue whale, and a quick check on Wikipedia still confirms this. There are some fossil fragments that suggest that some sauropods got bigger than this, but no complete fossils have been found that beat the biggest blue whales.


> most likely not the largest

What is/was, then?


Possibly the Bruhathkayosaurus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruhathkayosaurus


First sentence of article:

Bruhathkayosaurus (/bruːˌhæθkeɪ.ɵˈsɔrəs/; meaning "huge bodied lizard") might have been the largest dinosaur that ever lived. The accuracy of this claim, however, has been mired in controversy and debate. All the estimates are based on Yadagiri and Ayyasami's 1989 paper, which announced the find.[1]


Yup, that's why I used the word possibly. Part of the problem is the vagueness of the term largest. Heaviest? Longest? Most mass?


I think the important distinction is not the size term but the "confidence of existence" term: "Largest/heaviest/etc known animal..."


The Methuselah Foundation has funded one of the research groups interested in comparative studies of the genetics of longevity, helping them to obtain the resources to sequence bowhead whales. This is one of those lines of work that is next to impossible to get funding for from the normal institutional channels at the present time:

https://www.mfoundation.org/work#bowhead-whale

-----------------

Given the declining costs of DNA sequencing, all kinds of research that used to be prohibitively expensive even a few years ago is now becoming possible. For example, we recently awarded a $10,000 research grant to Dr. Joao Pedro de Magelhaes at the University of Liverpool to sequence the genome of the bowhead whale in order to study mechanisms for longevity in this warm-blooded mammal whose lifespan is estimated at over 200 years.

Not only are bowhead whales far longer-lived than humans, but their massive size means that they are likely to possess unique tumor suppression mechanisms. “These mechanisms for the longevity and resistance to aging-related diseases of bowhead whales are unknown,” says Dr. de Magelhaes, “but it is clear that in order to live so long, these animals must possess aging prevention mechanisms related to cancer, immunosenescence, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases."

The bowhead whale study will be conducted at the state-of-the-art Liverpool Centre for Genomic Research and results will be made available to the research community.


The long lifespan of whales could actually shed some light on human evolution.

Whales, along with many other mammalian species (including humans) exhibit a perplexing divergence of somatic and reproductive senescence. Female whales hit menopause long before their lives are over, in some cases spending the majority of their lives in a non-reproductive state, which prima facie seems rather maladaptive.

A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain what seems like widespread evolutionary selection for menopause, and none of them are completely satisfactory. The "grandmother hypothesis", for example, posits that experienced grandmothers assist in the care of their grandchildren, increasing their odds of survival.

Certain species of whales, including Orcinus orca, the killer whale, exhibit early-life menopause, and form stable matrilineal groups, making them ideal candidates for testing the grandmother hypothesis. Interestingly, studies on killer whales observe no significant correlation between living grandmothers and grandoffspring survival rates, though there are plenty of unaddressed confounding factors.

Humans are the only species where the grandmother hypothesis is supported by data, but the dearth of corresponding data in whales suggests the dramatic disparity in our somatic-reproductive senescence might be more strongly selected for by factors we are not yet aware of.


A convenient theory for longevity is, late menopause implies a selection (in the history of the species) against all of forms early age killers. So, I find it fascinating that a warm blooded (or even cold blooded e.g turtles) animal with an early menopause can ward off cancer for that long.


This is a bit of a stretch, but perhaps if whales are as smart as we think they are, elders are advantageous because they can pass down wisdom to younger whales.


Your suggestion is essentially the "grandmother hypothesis" mentioned in the parent comment.


> Humans are the only species where the grandmother hypothesis is supported by data, but the dearth of corresponding data in whales suggests the dramatic disparity in our somatic-reproductive senescence might be more strongly selected for by factors we are not yet aware of.

I thought average life expectancy of per-agrecultural, pre-technological humans was less than 40 years? It doesn't really seem like the grandmother hypothosis would enter into our evolutionary history then, as there would be very few post-menopause grandmothers around...


> I thought average life expectancy of per-agrecultural, pre-technological humans was less than 40 years?

Bill Gates fortune and mine average about 33 billion; averages aren't always useful information.


average life expectancy

Age at death has a bimodal distribution: a huge portion of humans die at or near birth. If you survive that you're pretty likely to live quite a while, living well past the mean. That's 'cause all the deaths at infancy bring down the mean quite a bit.


Average life expectancy is calculated without accounting for infant mortality; when accounted for, it's considerably higher, or so I'm told.


Even if infant mortality is discarded, average life expectancy is a poor estimator of typical expectations of life. Considering the case of pre-industrial societies, there was a second big wave of mortality during what we now call adolescence. In women it was driven by child bearing, while in men by either accidents or armed conflict with other groups of men. If half of the guys that make it to their 13th birthday will get themselves killed before their 21st, an average of 40 y.o. gives a very misleading idea of what "old folks" look like.


Another strong possibility is that it's not a selective adaptation at all.


Interesting that their evidence --a stone arrowhead found in a whale-- is actually also described in Moby Dick itself:

---

It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into [a whale, not Moby Dick] with the spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have been some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long before America was discovered.

gutenberg.org full text:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm


Moby Dick is so encyclopedic and digressive that I'm not surprised that any given random fact about whales might appear in it.


A good translation of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" has the same issue. Verne shoehorns pretty much every interesting fact about the ocean into it.

Both books are among my favorites, pretty much because of their dedication to the "medium."


Indeed, and this is my favorite random fact about whales in Moby Dick: "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me."


Haha ... true enough, though Ishmael is well established as an unreliable narrator.

Here's my favourite fact: the white whale Moby Dick is based on a real-life white whale named Mocha Dick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mocha_Dick


Did not know that. I echo your advice to people to give the book another go if they haven't finished it. It is so worth it.


I prefer Ishmael's method for finding water in the middle-of-nowhere American prairies (to wit: select a philosophy professor from your caravan and tell him to just wander around lost in thought for a few hours.)

... Ishmael is a nut. :b


There are clams alive today who hatched while the Ming dynasty was extant.

There are trees alive today which sprouted ten thousand years ago. Hell, Pando (albeit a clonal colony) could be 1,000,000 years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)

Astounding depths of time for a single organism to persist over - but ultimately dependent on a very sedate pace of life.


And they still haven't read past the first fifty pages because, like everyone else, they get bored and put the book down.

Seriously though, I find it remarkable that bowhead populations have come back so fast considering how long they live. The oceans must have been absolutely teeming with them back in the day, if they reproduce that fast and live that long.


It is their loss, the modern reader needs to take a cue from Ahab and not give up on Moby Dick.

Nathaniel Philbrick's "Why Read Moby-Dick?" gave me the kick I needed to tackle the book and I am grateful to him that I did (and plan to do so again).


I'm thinking that the modern whale is not a big fan of Ahab...


A discerning modern whale would know that it is a mistake to dislike a work of literature because its characters are flawed and distasteful.

Ahab could give that whale insight into the often obsessive nature of humanity, its willingness to sacrifice riches and life on the altar of revenge. Plus Moby Dick really kicks ass in several scenes.


I think their objection is more that Ahab was all about killing them... Other than that, your average modern whale is generally fairly accepting of human foibles.


Somewhat off topic... but I encourage everyone to watch the Blackfish documentary. These are incredible, amazing, highly intelligent animals. Different nations have their own languages. They know who we are, they know what we're doing to them, they know when we're making them do tricks for them for food for other's amusement.


Aquatic mammals are fascinating. They are so clearly mammals, yet they've adapted the mammalian traits that we take for granted as land-based evolutions to living in the water. I'm reminded of the bomb sniffing dolphins right now.


Not related to the content, but the construct and display of this article is less than conducive to reading it.


We really should kill them to examine them for scientific purposes. Plus, whale blubber is yum!


Offended? This is precisely what the Japanese do.


It makes me very proud to be Australian when the Aussie navy puts their warships between the Japanese whaler fleet and the whales.

The implied statement is "Shoot that harpoon at us and see what happens".

So far, it's been a lot of posturing. Many hundreds of whales have been saved.


The Australian Navy doesn't do this at all. There have been calls for the navy to do so, and calls by politicians and activists for more intervention, but the Navy does not put itself between Japanese whaling boats and whales.


Too bad they don't feel the same way about sharks...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Australian_shark_cull


Australians already eat 16,000 tonnes of shark per year.

Culling a few more to make beaches safer for swimming is hardly an issue. This regularly happens in other parts of Australia and certainly other parts of the world.

However, suddenly it has become a cause celebre for fashionable activists the world over. oh, those poor sharks. They don't realise the underlying reason for the protests is to give the greens more visibility in the upcoming West Australian Senate election that has to be re-run.

Personally, I have zero issue with culling sharks near swimming beaches. There is 17,000 miles of Australian coastline after all, and 99% of it is not swimming beaches.

If people wish to protest about sharks, then protest about the killing of sharks for shark fin soup, where the rest of the body is then dumped instead of being used.


Is it the navy? I thought it was activists http://www.seashepherd.org.au/


The navy does it all the time too.


I'd like to see some evidence of this.


That is awesome. It blows my mind how stupid humans can be about their and animals' role in the world.


I had whale "bacon" sashimi in Japan a few years ago, and it was better than I expected.


Dude, there are cows alive today who were born before the McRib was architected.


I guess you were not subtle enough :)


Au contraire, it appears that I was too subtle!


Slightly off-topic, but I can't help it: This is exactly why we picked the bowhead whale for our mascot at www.longaccess.com. :-)


I dont think you deserved the downvotes. longaccess indeed seems an important endeavor to undertake. All the best.



And, we the humans are here to destroy everything dumping nuclear wastes into the ocean.


And today is the day of vengeance !

"Planet of The Cetaceans"


[TAYLOR falls to his knees screaming]

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DANG YOU! GOLDANG YOU ALL TO HECK!

[TAYLOR buries his head in his hands, point of view switches to reveal half-buried in the sand and washed by the waves is MARINE WORLD]


ironically, any two hundred year old whale will know exactly the feelings of loss and devastation on finding your species has been all but wiped out.




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