
There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written (2013) - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-whales-alive-today-who-were-born-before-moby-dick-was-written-660944/?no-ist
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erikstarck
The book "Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and
the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies" (phew, long
name!) is a fascinating read about how the lifespan of whales, humans and
shrews are connected and all mammals are basically the same type of system
only scaled to various degrees. Example: the number of heartbeats during the
full lifespan of a whale and a shrew is more or less the same. Bigger body =>
longer lifespan.

It then goes on to analyse how cities and companies grow using the same system
thinking. Why do cities survive for centuries while companies typically go
under after a few decades?

Highly recommended.

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grawprog
There's a pretty cool exception to this. A lot of bats tend to have long
lifespans. Many microbats can live 25-30 years on average but, as the name
implies, are fairly tiny. The species I worked with all weighed under 20
grams.

The leading theory is that because of their hibernation, their heart rate
slows down and their lifespan is longer but the number of heart beats still
seems to average out when compared to other species with faster or slower
heart rates.

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kbenson
> The leading theory is that because of their hibernation

So, are they an exception because other hibernating species don't seem to show
this? I would expect if it's hibernation, we should see it pretty easily in
species that hibernate for winter regularly, like some bears. Or maybe
chipmunks or squirrels, if those are easier, but I'm not sure the hibernation
is quite the same, and whether that might affect it.

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grawprog
I'm not sure entirely the details, but bat hibernation is different than bear
hibernation. They don't store fat. The only mechanism they have to survive
while hibernating is lowering body temperature and heart rate. It's actually
not a true hibernation, they go into extended torpor, they still wake
occasionally to drink and mate with sleeping bats. Bats also go into a daily
torpor and another one in the latest part of the night.

Many bats are actually crepuscular and not nocturnal, meaning they're active
from dusk until early night and late night until dawn. The rest of the time
bats spend in that lowered heart rate and body temperature torpor state. This
is why white nose syndrome is so destructive. It causes bats to wake up early
from hibernation and they end up starving because they can't get food and they
can't hibernate properly.

It was about 6 years ago I last worked with bats. That was the leading theory
at the time. It may have changed, there's been an increase in bat research
since then, but knowledge about bats is fairly scarce compared to other
species. There just hasn't been a lot of work done in north america on then
and there's a fair amount we really don't know. In Europe and especially
England, there's been more research done but, the knowledge doesn't
necessarily apply to species elsewhere. Bats are really cool they're distinct
than most other small mammals. They're in an order all by themselves and
microbats are a huge sub-order with thousands of species all over the world.

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lifeisstillgood
I am currently reflecting on the passage of time - the last two (working)
decades have seemed like a flash of missed opportunities and amazing
opportunities grasped and children born and growing

But to have two centuries of children and companions ... well that's just
amazing.

(On the other hand the whales are probably thinking something like "you
harpoon wielding ape bastards, wait till our spaceship returns we'll have you
then")

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tw1010
You're comparing your accomplishments to the rest of society. If you feel like
you haven't used your last two decades appropriately, and feel like you could
really use a couple centuries, remember that if that were the case, everyone
else would probably have the same lifespan, and you'd be back to the same
position you are now, comparing yourself to others.

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daniel-cussen
Time to extend copyright laws to protect whale authors.

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cryptozeus
What a magnificent creature, thank god they can survive in that cold weather.
Otherwise thye would have been hunted to the extinction.

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antidaily
There are some Greenland sharks that are almost 300 years old, possibly as old
as 500. [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/these-
sh...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/these-sharks-live-
to-400/495425/)

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mosselman
How can any human come up with the idea of hunting creatures that are 200
years old? Where do we get this sense of superiority?

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avar
Pigs are smart and can live to be around 15 to 20 years old, and by all
accounts are as smart or smarter than whales.

I don't see how the expected lifespan of a single individual is a determining
factor in the moral calculus of what humans should or shouldn't kill.

Why isn't it morally equivalent to kill 10 pigs who could have collectively
lived to be 200 years old for bacon and killing one whale who could have lived
to be 200?

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uxcolumbo
Maybe we need to ask ourselves:

Why kill other sentient beings at all when it's not necessary anymore for our
survival?

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bena
Ok, but what if plants are sentient?

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-
whispering...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-
trees-180968084/)

What if survival depends on suffering to some degree?

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uxcolumbo
Thanks for that link.

I should have phrased the question slightly differently.

It's more around whether animals (e.g. vertebrates) can suffer and experience
pain like we do.

The answer is yes - that's why we use animals in pain research and that's why
a pig or cow screams when it's cut with a knife for example.

Even fish feel pain [0].

Plants react to stimuli - but plants don't have a nervous system, they don't
have nociceptors (neurons responding to life threatening signals) to
experience and feel pain, they don't have any means to 'escape pain', e.g.
running away from danger.

[0] [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-
pain...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-
pain-180967764/)

~~~
bena
No problem. It's a thought that's been consistently nagging me for a while. It
kind of throws a lot of things for loops.

For instance, you make a point of specifying you're considering whether things
can suffer and experience pain _like we do_.

Why is that the delineating factor here? We don't really understand
intelligence of consciousness and we've been basing our measures of both on
the only instance where we're relatively confident exists. We think, therefore
we are.

But what if we're wrong. What if our way isn't the only way to be intelligent,
to be sentient. Why must they experience pain the way we do in order to be
afforded protection? If we're just privileging our type of sentience over
others, we're just drawing a different line. And always when someone draws a
line, I ask, why there?

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mercer
I suppose the most inclusive line would be drawn at the point of our own
survival. So at the very least we'd eat plants until we figure out some
alternative that doesn't 'kill' plants.

From there on it's a tough one though...

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bena
Ok, but what gives you more of a right to survival than the plants you kill?
If anything, plants are the most benign entities on the planet, they're the
only beings capable of producing their own food.

These are hard questions, I don't expect anyone to have the answers.

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opwieurposiu
Plants kill animals by being poisonous, and sometimes by eating as in the case
of the pitcher plant. Animals kill plants by eating, and sometimes by
poisoning, like when dog pee kills the grass.

Everything kills everything else. Living things are merely temporary storage
for genetic information. The genetic information that increase's its number of
redundant backups faster then the number of instance failures wins.

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bena
I can't think of any other species off-hand that has a developed sense of
general ethics. We're not discussing how the world is. It is how it is.

However, if you're of the opinion that is unethical to cause more suffering
and that killing other beings just to ensure your own survival then plants
having sentience is a pickle.

Something has to give. You have to give in to the circle of life and
acknowledge that your survival will bring in some measure of suffering to
other beings. Or sacrifice yourself since there is no way to eat ethically by
your standards.

Obviously, the vast majority of people will choose survival. But now they have
to draw a line. What's friend and what's food? And once you draw that line,
you have to defend that choice. You can't just say "because it's X", you have
to explain why it is so.

I mean, learning all of this has just made me more of a "speciesist". I don't
believe there is any way to resolve the conflict.

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bryanrasmussen
are any of these whales white though?

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jessaustin
C'mon man, TFA addressed this.

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bryanrasmussen
sorry in a bad joke mood lately.

