
Ancient whales were predators not gentle giants - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-ancient-whales-predators-gentle-giants.html
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yaakov34
Here's the paper link (kudos to the journalists for at least giving us the
title of the paper, if not a link we could follow; sometimes the article in
the popular press looks nothing like what the scientists published).
[http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roybiolett/13...](http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roybiolett/13/8/20170348.full.pdf)

If I read this correctly, the discovery is not that the early whales were
predators, but that filter-feeding evolved separately from their teeth; that
is, the baleen - which is not homologous to teeth - is the first filter
mechanism that the whales acquired, while previously, some people thought that
the whales developed filter-feeding with their teeth before developing the
baleen.

This is an exciting discovery, I suppose, for scientists studying whale
evolution, but probably for nobody else. The popular press treatment turned it
into "they discovered that whales were predators", which makes little sense,
since a) everybody knew the whales did not have baleen when they were land-
dwelling, I mean, how would that work; and b) all whales obviously had teeth
at some point in their evolution, before the baleen whales lost them.

~~~
djsumdog
The article also talks about "killer whales" and their teeth, but Orcas aren't
whales. They're dolphins (or more specifically, they belong to the porpoise
group of mammals).

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AbrahamParangi
While Orcas _are_ members of dolphin family (Delphinidae), they _are not_
members of the porpoise family (Phocoenidae) and the whole Orcas are not
whales distinction is kind of silly anyway because they're all cetaceans.

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Isamu
And modern sperm whales hunt giant squid. They have found giant squid beaks in
the stomachs of sperm whales. And the whales will have scars from the battles.
But it happens at such depths that it hasn't been seen, to my knowledge.

edit: whale, with calf, eating a giant squid:
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/photogalleri...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/photogalleries/giant-
squid-sperm-whale-pictures/)

~~~
dfc
And?

I don't understand what the logical connection is to the article. Sperms
whales are not the only example of odontocetes (toothed whales). Orcas hunt
seals, bottlenose dolphins hunt fish...

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wonderous
A Blue whale can consume as many as 40 million krill per day, if that's not a
predator, not sure what one is.

~~~
doikor
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

A billion just a foot note?

~~~
protomyth
Do you want to write a song for the dead krills? Go ahead, write one.

On a more serious, less timely paraphrase, the shear amount of death at the
bottom of the food chain both on land and at sea is mind boggling.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Yup, all food is death. Vegetarians and vegans are just picking their ethical
battles, really.

I sometimes idly wonder things like how far we are from sci-fi synthesis of a
complete diet from entirely inorganic materials that have never been in a
living thing. It might even become a necessity as a spacefaring species.
Although, humans separated by interstellar distances would almost certainly
diverge to the point where maintaining a single “species” becomes dubious,
even if you had constant interbreeding, so you might have humans eating local
plants & animals on other planets that are nutritionally useless or hazardous
to Earthlings.

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grondilu
Didn't we know that already?

I mean, the evolution of Cetacea is fairly well understood by now. We know
they all derive from a terrestrial small carnivorous artiodactyle. And all
descendants had sharp teeth until relatively recently. Even today quite many
of them are still active predators.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans)

~~~
Scriptor
Yes, cetacean evolution is one of the most well-studied areas, with decades of
research behind it.

This particular finding seems to be about early baleen whales, back when they
still had teeth (not just baleen). Seems like early baleen wales had very
sharp teeth that were likely used for cutting, not for some sort of early type
of filtration.

You might be interested in the actual paper:
[http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/13/8/20170348](http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/13/8/20170348)

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dalbasal
Whether or not something is a predator is a lot more important to us than to
biology. The distinction between eating small krill and eating large fish,
even less so.

Lots of mammals seem to evolve back and forward between various food sources.
Look at our branch. Most/many primates have a mixed diet, in many of the
families. There are some specialists like gorillas and bleeding heart baboons,
and they’re not necessarily related.

So, our ancestors were probably all over the predator-prey spectrum.

~~~
microcolonel
Not to mention, krill are animals. Only at the scale of a whale could filter
feeding be considered _gentle giant_ behaviour. At our scale it's probably
more like _genocidal giant_ if you consider the thousands of little animals
which dissolve alive inside the whale.

~~~
grondilu
It's not so much what whales eat that matters, rather than how they eat it.
The size difference between a whale and a krill is so big that for all intents
and purposes, whales feed much more like a cow than a lion. They're _browsing_
, except they don't browse vegetals, but small animals.

To say they are not predators makes sense in the behavioral sense.

~~~
Retric
They do actually hunt for denser populations of krill. So, IMO it's closer to
predator behavior than pure browsing.

~~~
avar
Cows also seek out denser grass, so that hardly destroys the analogy.

~~~
Retric
Bubble netting is a little more complex than just walking to a new area.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_net_feeding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_net_feeding)

Also, baleen whales are not limited to krill and do eat a lot of larger fish.

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JackFr
Just to be clear - when I eat Jell-o I use my toungue to force it out between
my teeth and pretend I'm a whale.

Am I in danger of developing baleen?

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passive
When I visited the whales exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in New
York, 3 years ago or so, they showed that early whales were kind of like
alligators, so I'm not sure why this is a new discovery. Perhaps it just firms
up the timeline for when their feeding mechanism changed, or maybe there's
some other detail that's escaping me here.

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cr0sh
Just to add a little to the discussion, after reading the article I was
curious to know and understand what the ancient land-dwelling ancestors to
modern day whales looked like, and found this:

[http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03](http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03)

It's very fascinating and clearly shows the evolution of whales in great
detail; apparently whales and hippos are related, but are two branches from a
common ancestor (which I took from this that we don't yet know what
ancestor?).

Regardless, after looking at that page, I clicked around the site - and found
the whole thing really intriguing and detailed.

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Mikeb85
All whales are predators. And there are plenty that still have teeth and are
rather ruthless hunters (sperm whales, orcas, etc...).

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killjoywashere
Hey, you don't suppose multiple competitive threads of evolution were occuring
at the same time do you?

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hbarka
Curious choice of words. Are we too predators or gentle giants (from smaller
animals' perspective)?

~~~
ajross
It's just a dumb headline. _All_ whales are predators. Some just evolved to
filter crustaceans out of the water intead of tearing flesh off off fish.
Krill are still animals. Gray whales are still carnivores.

But yes: early whales had a lifestyle that looked more like a dolphin's than a
humpback's, which isn't surprising since a humpback skull works very poorly
for hunting animals on land, which is where their common ancestor came from.

What's actually more interesting is that the only other living descendant of
that common ancestor isn't a predator at all, nor does it look like one. It's
the Hippo.

~~~
gozur88
Gray whales and sperm whales are carnivores.

So are Humpback whales, which switch off between krill and small fish (like
sardines), depending on what's available.

Also, hippos have been observed killing and eating other animals, so they've
been moved into the "mostly herbivorous but enjoy a meaty snack on occasion"
category.

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fairpx
They are still predators, they just pivoted to a different diet.

~~~
agumonkey
I guess when you become so large you don't have any direct predator you have
options. Monopolistic Whales.

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PierogiForever
Wow, fascinating! Wondering what happened, that such a huge predator stopped
hunting - convenience, and that's why their teeth fell out? His skull looks
like a dragon skull from Game of Thrones though...

