Posts tagged whales
Shipping Makes Way for Whales: The global shipping regulator, the International Maritime Organization, recently announced it will adjust the economically crucial shipping lanes leading into the bustling ports of California, thereby reducing danger to the whales that ply those same waters. The changes will likely take effect this year.
Whale X-ing signs needed I think…
TWiDN: Whales Can Speak and We’ve Got More Stars
This week in Discovery News you’ll be shocked to hear the sound of a whale talking. Plus, see some hi-res photos of the most ancient language yet to be decoded and a SUPER high definition photo of our galaxy.
If you want to buy any of the shirts Trace wears, visit DiscoveryNews.com/Shirts!
Certain whales can imitate the voices of humans
The marine mammal, a white whale named NOC, copied the sound of people so well that at first, researchers thought they were hearing humans conversing in the distance. A diver who worked with NOC once even left the water, wondering, “Who told me to get out?” The voice turned out to be that of NOC.
“They are highly vocal animals,” lead author Sam Ridgway of the National Marine Mammal Foundation told Discovery News, adding that NOC was not the first to copy human speech.
“A major instance occurred at Vancouver Aquarium in 1979,” he said. “In that case, people thought the whale uttered his name (“Lagosi”) and other sounds that were like garbled German or Russian. Our whale was the second example, however, ours was the first solid demonstration using acoustic analysis including ‘voice print’ simultaneously with human speech.”
Dude, those fireman look like they came out of the pages of “The Wizard of Oz” and the Whale Bus (while really interesting) would be rather cruel for the whale.
What will the world look like in the year 2000? In 1900, French artists were asked to draw their predictions for the future and they are fantastic! From flying firemen to electric trains, the predictions cover a wide range of good and not-so-good technology. Whatever you do, don’t miss the Whale Bus!
See our 16 favorite here: The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be!
I’d be thinking holy $**t.
What’d be going through your mind in this photo moment?
Photo by Brian Skerry via National Geographic; oliwr
(via smithsonianmag)
Whale Blows Rainbow: DNews Nuggets
Filming a pod of whales breach the surface of the waters off the coast of Nova Scotia, a group of whale-spotters had an extra special surprise in store.
How the Blue Whale Eats Whatever It Wants
Studying the world’s largest animal, the blue whale, has been challenging to say the least, but scientists now know more about how this huge species feeds.
A study published in the latest issue of Nature reveals that these whales and their other big relatives have a special sensory organ in their jaws that controls eating.
The discovery sheds some light on how blue whales can fuel their impressive girth.
Bottlenose dolphins at the Planète Sauvage aquarium in Port-Saint-Père, France sound like they are mimicking recorded humpback whale songs, reported Science. Whale songs, seagull calls, music and other sounds, play over loudspeakers in the park as the dolphins perform.
Researchers discovered the dolphin’s nocturnal practice sessions by accident. Martine Hausberger of the University of Rennes 1 and her colleagues wanted to know more about the sounds dolphins make at night, so they hung underwater microphones in the performing dolphins’ tank overnight.
Kieran Mulvaney on a proposal by Nature writers.
Writing in the journal Nature last week, Christopher Costello, Steven Gaines and Leah Gerber proposed “an alternative path forward that could break the deadlock: quotas that can be bought and sold, creating a market that would be economically, ecologically and socially viable for whalers and whales alike. Because conservationists could bid for quotas, whalers could profit from whales even without harvesting the animals.”
photo: Illustration of the White Whale by A. Burnham Shute for Moby Dick by Herman Melville. (Corbis)
Whale and dolphin playing together or is this a photoshop job?
This picture showed up on the Facebook page for The Whale and Dolphin People Project, an unconventional group that aims to be “a game-changer campaign to stop the killing of whales & dolphins by changing their status from animal to people.”
The caption beneath the picture explains what may be going on:
It was taken by Lori Mazzuca in Hawaii. She said that the dolphin and humpback whale were playing gently together. The game seemed to be about how long the dolphin could stay atop the whale’s head while the whale swam. When the dolphin finally slipped off it joined another dolphin and they began to leap with joy.Slightly suspicious of Photoshopping, I asked around among some whale and dolphin experts. Without a video, it’s impossible to know what these two animals were thinking, the scientists said.
Emily Sohn looks into the mystery of this Whale and Dolphin pic.
