What Life On A New Planet Will Mean

SPERM WHALE EVOLVED TO RAMMING

Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick was inspired by historical instances in which large sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus L.) sank 19th century whaling ships by ramming them with their foreheads. The immense forehead of sperm whales is possibly the largest, and one of the strangest, anatomical structures in the animal kingdom. It contains two large oil-filled compartments, known as the “spermaceti organ” and “junk,” that constitute up to one-quarter of body mass and extend one-third of the total length of the whale 

Now an international team of researchers used structural engineering principles to test how the head of the sperm whale might be able to resist strong ramming impacts. Using computer simulations and working from published data on sperm-whale tissue and skeletal structure, scientists modeled impacts of varying types, and from a range of directions,what they found is the whale’s junk proved to play a vital role, with tissue partitions distributing much of the stress from ramming impacts and thereby preventing the skull from fracturing.

Although male sperm whales may not fight frequently, we know that aggressive ramming behaviour is a common characteristic in the group of mammals from which whales are derived – the even-toed ungulates, the artiodactyls. 

Illustration: Schematic representation of sperm whale head structure, courtesy of Ali Nabavizadeh. 

Reference: Panagiotopoulou et al. 2016. Architecture of the sperm whale forehead facilitates ramming combat Peerj

The Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus, is a member of the “sleeper shark” family. It moves very slowly around the deep ocean.

They grow to enormous sizes – in some cases more than 5 metres (16 feet) long – and live in very cold waters in the far north Atlantic, sometimes at the surface but often as deep as 1,800 metres (1.1 miles). They cruise along at 0.74 metres per second, or about three-quarters of a mile an hour.

It was already known that they can live for more than 200 years, but new research has shown that is literally only half the story.

When the oldest shark researchers studied was born (the Greenland shark gives birth to live young, not eggs), the Pilgrims had only recently settled in Massachusetts. Europe’s Thirty-Year War was in its infancy. James I sat on the throne of England. It lived through the English Civil War, the Great Plague and Fire of London, the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, both world wars, and the entire nine-season run of Seinfeld.

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The Micro Monsters Beneath Your Beach Blanket

Little things live big lives between grains of sand...

Slithering and clawing and swimming through the liquid film between individual grains of sand, mud, and other sediment, is a thriving ecosystem of microscopic organisms that spend their entire existence in a world so miniscule that, as Rachel Carson once wrote, a droplet of water separating two grains of sand is “like a vast, dark sea.”

Unicellular organisms coat the sediments and ride the water between the grains. And animals, microscopic to us yet behemoths to the bacteria, algae, and protists they share these interstitial worlds with, take the roles of herbivore, carnivore, and detritivore to create rich and complex food webs…

I always get really…touchy, when someone says they want to go into marine biology for the whales. I admire their love for the ocean and the mammals living within it, but I also get frustrated with their naivety. A degree doesn’t guarantee any kind of field work. 

In fact, it’s a hell of lot of work to be able to do any kind of field work, and even less likely for it to be marine mammal related. I spent one semester on marine mammals. Just 16 weeks, and half the experiences I had with strandings and training and dissections came with my location and pure happenstance. 

Marine biology isn’t whales. It’s becoming a statistician with a deeply routed knowledge on marine ecosytems and processes. I didn’t spend four years working through the blood, sweat, and tears for this degree to listen to someone complain about not being able to pet a dolphin when they graduate. 

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Date Idea: binge watch all the Free Willy movies

Inside the Rugged Lives of Mongolia’s Nomads 

Filmmaker Brandon Li captures life in western Mongolia in his film Nomads of Mongolia. Watch the nomadic Kazakh people train eagles to hunt, herd yaks, and race camels in this visually stunning short.

By: National Geographic. Donate to the National Geographic Society