Thursday, July 28, 2011

Close Encounters of the Giant Kind

Today I have something that is not from Africa but anyway very amazing:

Brian Skerry describes the exhiliration of an up-close encounter with a curious, 45-foot-long right whale.

Right whales are three species of large baleen whales consisting of two genera in the family Balaenidae of order Cetacea. Their bodies are very dark gray or black and rotund.

They are called "right whales" because whalers thought the whales were the "right" ones to hunt, as they float when killed and often swim within sight of shore. As such, they were nearly hunted to extinction during the active years of the whaling industry. Today, instead of hunting them, people often watch these acrobatic animals for pleasure.

Genetic evidence appears to have settled a long-standing question about whether to include the largest, the Arctic-dwelling bowhead whale, with the rest. All four are included in the taxonomic family Balaenidae, and all four are generally referred to as right whales. This article focuses on the three species of the genus Eubalaena.
The right whales' diet consists primarily of zooplankton, primarily the tiny crustaceans called copepods, as well as krill, and pteropods, although they are occasionally opportunistic feeders.
Drawing of a North Pacific Right Whale

As with other baleens, they feed by filtering prey from the water. They swim with an open mouth, filling it with water and prey. The whale then expels the water, using its baleen plates to retain the prey. Prey must occur in sufficient numbers to trigger the whale's interest; be large enough that the baleen plates can filter it; and be slow enough that it cannot escape. The "skimming" may take place on the surface, underwater, or even at the ocean's bottom, indicated by mud occasionally observed on right whales' bodies.

14 comments:

  1. Wow, those guys are massive. I had the experience to be on a small boat and actually touch the whales. I dont know what specie is the one that we have in our Patagonia (south Argentina). They were hanging around the boat, i was a bit scared to be honest hahahah they werent THAT big though. It was fun :D. For some reason they have a lot of crap sticked to them like sea debris, algae and stuff like that. Sorry for hijacking, but your post reminded me that :)

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  2. awe inspiring video. makes us looks so small in nature

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  3. i read the paper this morning (i live in the pacific northwest) and one of these actually was found dead on a beach :O

    that would be one crazy encounter. I'm glad it was just curious!

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  4. Whales are really fascinating... like you can swim through a blue whales heart, that's how big it is... 0_o woah.

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  5. ive always found whales to be so majestic, and obviously huge haha. it sickens me to think people would kill this animals in their hundreds!

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  6. It's always sad to see human excess in action. We feel the need to do everything until it cannot be done anymore, always taking more than we need. Luckily this species survived.

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  7. OMG,I didn't want to be the man near its mouth.

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  8. Wow... It's such a shame that we as humans would have the capacity to kill such a beautiful being.
    Tech Me

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  9. Wow, the size of that thing is amazing. It must be something to behold. You know, big animals scare the fuck out of me, though.

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  10. By the way, have you done something on the African Cichlids in Lake Victoria/Malawi, yet? They're amazing, and I would totally be interested in that. I think a lot of your readers would, too.

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  11. WOW is all I can say! Following+1

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  12. @Genetics: Im thinking about making a post about the Cichlids in the next days, but first I have to do a little research ;-)

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