News of Whales

Reading the free Juneau Alaska newspaper The Capitol City Weekly I encountered a very good article on the topic of preservation of a skeleton of a humpback whale killed by a cruise ship in S.E. Alaska during 2001. The perpetrator of the whale slaughter was caught and fined, yet the damage had been done.

The whale was a 46 year old named Snow that had been tracked by scientists for more than a quarter century. From examination of the carcass they were able to confirm a scientific hypothesis regarding the aging of whale by counting rings in their ears (no not that kind). Rather like tree rings the cartilaginous accretions gain one ring per year.

The most elderly humpback whale carcass was then known to be 96 years old. That is rather equivalent to a human lifespan, and whales with larger brains than human beings have more in common with human life experiences.
Whales are taking a beating from humanity of course with far diminished numbers. A baby killer whale carcass of 8 feet was found recently off the Washington coast. Necropsy showed it to have died from an umbilical hernia. The Puget Sound and probably proximal Pacific waters are rather toxic for whales.

That reminds me-why not invent some sort of cheap, lightweight stick on whistle that would sound a warning for birds when an electric power fan is turning quickly so they can avoid the choppy death? Bird hearing might be adequate for recognizing that sort of sound and identify it with a material object.

Whale brains are larger yet have larger parts too making them run a little slower I would guess. Human brains have optimal packing of circuits for processing data rather comparable to a computer chip density. Although Intel recently completed a teraflop chip, biological 'chips' are optimalized in the human brain form. Too larger means slower because of longer distances to send information, too much heat and too thick of axons-dendrites and so forth. Too small means not enough computing capacity, yet of course even mosquitoes fly as well as human airline pilots so kinds of thought are rather automatic.

The skeleton of Snow was conserved and will be displayed at Gustavus Alaska in the future.