cetacean
laelaps | April 30, 2010I feel like I have been run over by a truck. Between blogging, working on my book, fieldwork, pitching freelance articles, and research, I just didn't have the energy to come up with something new today. Instead enjoy this post, written a little more than a year ago, about how the hip of a fossil whale was mistaken for the shoulders of an ancient bird. -- Brian
The right hip of Basilosaurus as seen in Lucas' 1900 description.If you were a 19th century paleontologist and you wanted a skeleton of the fossil whale Basilosaurus, there was only one place to look; Alabama. Even though fossils of…
edyong | February 3, 2009Nine years ago, a team of fossil-hunters led by Philip Gingerich from the University of Michigan uncovered something amazing - the petrified remains of an ancient whale, but one unlike any that had been found before. Within the creature's abdomen lay a collection of similar but much smaller bones. They were the fossilised remains of a foetal whale, perfectly preserved within the belly of its mother. Gingerich says, "This is the 'Lucy' of whale evolution."
The creatures are new to science and Gingerich have called them Maiacetus inuus. The genus name is an amalgamation of the Greek words "maia…
zooillogix | October 15, 2008One of the Vancouver Aquarium's resident belugas, Qila, gave birth to a healthy calf back in June. Now four months old, the calf is beginning to play with her trainers and especially enjoys tongue rubs, which the aquarium staff say is kind of like a massage... for your tongue...
From the video info section: "Look closely for her frilly tongue. It helps forms a tight seal while she's nursing. Beluga calves don't suckle; instead, the mother squirts milk into her calf's mouth.
The calf will have a name by the end of October. Her name will be chosen from entries to the Aquarium's Name the Baby…
zooillogix | October 3, 2008
Zooillogix has a lot of Belgian readers. This makes us uncomfortable. One such pale reader, Thomas Cordie, pointed us to some beautiful photos of right whales on National Geographic. Despite my temptation to just copy them all for you to enjoy, I'm posting one, and suggesting you take a look over there.
More NGC stuff below the fold:
A lion rides a horse in China for some reason.
Thanks goatrodeo.
zooillogix | September 30, 2008Aquarium staff at Kinosaki Marine World in western Japan recently noticed that their dolphins were less acrobatic in their performances and more lethargic in general. Concerned about their health, the dolphins were weighed and found to be significantly heavier since only a few months prior. Apparently a fattier mackeral, their typical breakfast, lunch, and dinner, was to blame. Aquarists quickly started calling the dolphins "fatty" and "fatty-fat-fat" and telling them no one would love them in an effort to get them to throw-up their meals after eating them. When that failed, they tried…
bleimanb | August 11, 2008Researchers at the New England Aquarium have stepped into a totally new method of studying Atlantic's threatened population of right whales - collecting and analyzing floating feces to test the population's health!
I didn't know whales ate corn!
Right whales got their name because they were the "right" whale to catch during whaling's hey day, when exterminating an entire species was jolly good form. Despite rigorous efforts to protect them against whaling interests, including Japanese "research" vessels, right whale populations have not increased noticeably in the last 65 years. In…
zooillogix | June 11, 2008
This calf was born yesterday to Qila, who herself was born at the Vancouver Aquarium 12 years ago.
Special thanks to Vancouver Aquarium employee Keey Prior for bringing this to our attention.
bleimanb | May 7, 2008This 6-month old pygmy right whale stranded itself on the beach in New Zealand. It is being dissected by a team of scientists as I write this! The whale has a similar head to true right whales, but scientists do not believe that they are closely related. In fact, they are not quite sure where these rare whales fit into the overall evolutionary tree. Hopefully this dissection will help them put some of the pieces in the puzzle.
You can watch along step by step, as these Museum of New Zealand researchers carve their way through this little guy on Te Papa's Blog.
bleimanb | March 12, 2008A Japanese research vessel bonanza.
Note that there is no sound on this vid so as not to wake the whales...
bleimanb | March 12, 2008A mother and baby pygmy sperm whale in New Zealand appeared disoriented this week, repeatedly stranding themselves on a sandbar off of Mahia Beach. After multiple attempts by the locals to guide the whales back to sea failed, the human rescuers were starting to get worried. All of a sudden, a well known, local dolphin named Moko appeared and seemed to communicate with the whales. Before long, Moko was guiding the whales back to sea!
"The whales made contact with the dolphin and she basically escorted them about 200 metres parallel with the beach to the edge of the sandbar...Then she did a…
zooillogix | December 19, 2007A pod of Orcas surrounds a seal on an ice sheet and creates waves to try and knock it off. This reminds me of when you buy a candy bar and it gets stuck by the wrapper and you have to shake the machine to get it out.
Thanks to Zooillogix reader extraordinaire Don Quixjote (aka ali) for forwarding along.
zooillogix | November 29, 2007
Whale or little alien? How can we be sure...
A couple of months ago we covered the birth of a baby beluga whale to mama Mauyak at the Shedd Aquarium. Well now Shedd is asking for your help in naming the rambunctious little tyke. A variety of names from the Pacific Northwest that are equally meaningless to an English speaker's ear can be selected:
Ipiktok (Ip-eek-tock) Very keen or sharp
Opipok (Oh-pee-pock) Admirable, to admire
Tuwawi (Too-wah-wee) Quick
Nilak (Nee-lock) Fresh water ice
Kimalu (Kee-ma-loo) Traditional Inuit name given to special people
Mituk (Mee-took) Small snow layer on…
zooillogix | September 22, 2007This extremely rare and beautiful "pink dolphin" was spotted and photographed by Capt. Erik Rue of Calcasieu Charter Service on June 24th, 2007 during a charter fishing trip on Calcasieu Lake south of Lake Charles, LA.
An albino dolphin, with reddish eyes and glossy pink skin, the critter was smaller than its companions suggesting that it was immature. These pictures are apparently of the albino traveling with its mother.
Apparently these photos were circulating back in June but they just made their way to us, so we decided to share.
zooillogix | August 29, 2007
In a surprise move, the white-flag dolphin came out of extinction to perform some acrobatics for a Chinese factory owner (is there any other kind?) with a digital camera. This was particularly notable as the dolphin was declared "most likely extinct" by a Chinese scientist just a week ago, which was instantly translated to "definitively extinct" by media outlets throughout the world. Now officially categorized as "not so extinct," the dolphin is still almost certainly "practically extinct" but the sighting does provide a sliver of hope. The media outlets rush to publish has brought…
zooillogix | June 15, 2007Ever wonder where sea creatures have been or where they're headed? Thanks to marvelous modern technology and an ambitious team of prestigious scientific organizations, now you can watch in almost real-time! Since 2002, Tagging of Pacific Pelagic (TOPPS) research project has tagged over 2,000 animals with tiny microprocessors and sophisticated remote sensing systems to track exactly where, when and how deep they're traveling through the ocean.
Movements of twelve tagged salmon sharks over the last 60 days.
The results are fantastic maps showing up-to-the-minute movements of mako sharks…