The First Victim of Global Warming: the Narwhal
	The polar bear is indeed a more iconic animal than the narwhal and, on top of that, despite being classified as marine, we can see it mostly on land. This may explain why people have been focusing more on it than on other Arctic animals, when warning about the danger of extinction caused by global warming. With all this, a new research published in the Ecological Applications journal shows which species would be the first victim: the narwh ... [read more >>]
	13 May 2008, 04:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Whales Conquered the Oceanic Abyss
	Toothed whales represent the diving champions of all air-breathing animals. Sperm whales dive at depths of over 1,200 m (3,600 ft) for more than an hour, while Cuvier’s beaked whale (a type of toothed whale) holds the record for diving amongst any sea mammal - 1,900 m (6,330 ft), that translate into 190 atmospheres, for one hour and 25 minutes. The bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon) can dive for periods of 2 hours, at depths at 495 m (1,650 ft ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 04:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Weird Tongues
	Tongue is an organ specific to the vertebrates. And they can do a lot of things with their tongues... 1. A blue whale weighing 60-70 tons (and the largest blue whales can double this weight) has a 3 tons tongue. It is by far the largest tongue in the animal world. And the whale tongue is not large because of the overall size of the animal; right whales have extremely oversized tongues for their bodies, because they use their tongues lik ... [read more >>]
	12 April 2008, 07:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Dolphin Saves Stranded Whales
	Real cases of people saved from drowning by dolphins are known from ancient Greek and Roman stories to the legends of the Polynesians and Maori of the New Zealand. There were cases of dolphins which defended shipwrecked people swimming in the water from shark attacks, till rescue ships appeared. But this behavior is a time record ever: Moko, a New Zealand bottlenose dolphin, saved two stranded pigmy sperm whales (Kogia). "Before M ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 07:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A White Killer Whale!
	The killer whale, or orca, is one of those animals with an unmistakable color pattern that cannot fool even an uninitiated person. But now, researchers have taken pictures of a white killer whale near the Aleutian Islands (western Alaska). The beast of the myths turned into reality. "I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it. It was quite neat to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a biologist a ... [read more >>]
	08 March 2008, 05:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

6 Amazing Things About Killer Whales (Orcas)
	1. The killer whale or orca is, together with the Great White Shark, the top predator of the oceans. The name of "whale" is deceptive, as this cetacean is not even a toothed whale, but a dolphin. That's right, the largest of all: males can be up to 8 m (26 ft) long and weigh up to 8 tonnes. The mouth is adorned with 50 dagger-like teeth. 2. The appreciation of killer comes from a research made in 1862, when the ... [read more >>]
	25 February 2008, 10:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Do Whales Sleep?
	Have you ever wondered how whales sleep? Actually, just like us, but in short naps. This was showed by a new research led by Dr. Patrick Miller of the University of St. Andrews, who captured on video drifting behavior in sperm whales. Sperm whales in the wild turn off completely conscious activity for short 'cat naps'. The research also shows that sperm whales may sleep less than other mammal species. The drifting behavior (& ... [read more >>]
	22 February 2008, 08:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Beaked Whales Hear Through Their Throats!
	Beaked whales get their name from the shape of their snouts and their large size, but these cetaceans are close-related to dolphins. This family of toothed cetaceans is amongst the least known mammalian families. They measure between 3,4 to 12 m (11 to 40 ft) length and weigh 1 to 15 tones. They make deep dives and feed from the sea floor by suction feeding, without using their teeth (which are in fact deeply reduced in number of down ... [read more >>]
	11 February 2008, 03:28GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The First Whale: a Cat Sized Deer-Like Veggie!
	The blue whale can be up to 33 m (100 ft) in length and weigh 181 tons, yet its recently described ancestor was just a large cat sized deerlike hoofed mammal. The semiaquatic creature, called Indohyus, inhabited southern Asia some 48 million years ago, and has been described in a research published in the journal "Nature". It was an artiodactyl (even-toed ungulate), from the group comprising pigs, sheep, hippos, deer and gira ... [read more >>]
	20 December 2007, 02:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nature's Largest Gulp
	Whales may be the largest animals ever, but, despite this, the pharynx of the baleen whales (true whales) is so narrow that they cannot swallow anything larger than a herring. Still, their enormous mouths suggest they have a huge gulp. And in some species, the so-called rorquals, that include humpback whales and blue whales (world's largest species), the ventral skin folds can lead this to an extreme in the animal world. These spe ... [read more >>]
	28 November 2007, 05:40GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sea Whale Found Stranded 1,000 mi (1,600 km) Deep into the Amazon
	Some sea creatures can sometimes go upstream on large rivers, like for example the sharks. The bull sharks, a dangerous species for all humans, does it in many tropical areas. But this took everyone by surprise: an 18-foot (6 m) long and 12 tons heavy minke whale stranded on a sandbar in the Amazon jungle about 1,000 mi (1,600 km) from the ocean, signaled the Brazilian media on Friday. A large crowd gathered along the Tap ... [read more >>]
	19 November 2007, 07:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

14 Amazing Facts about Whales
	1.Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) appeared 50 million years ago (the oldest known whale being Pakicetus), having (as revealed by DNA) a common origin with …the hippopotamus (!). 40 million years ago whales were divided into baleen whales and toothed whales. The oldest known baleen whale is Mamalodon (that lived 25 million years ago in Australia). The first gigantic baleen whales appeared 5 million years ago. 2.There are 15 species of ... [read more >>]
	17 October 2007, 16:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

YouTube Fighting Against Japanese Whaling
	The Australian authorities which are trying to stop Japan from whaling in the Antarctic turned to YouTube in a desperate move to convince the world that such a move might kill several species of these creatures. Australia's Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull published a clip on YouTube to convince the Japanese officials that they must stop their attempts to capture the whales. Reuters reported that Japan wants to hunt 50 ... [read more >>]
	10 October 2007, 05:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Best Perfume Coming From Vomit
	If we pay huge prices for perfumes coming from the anal glands of the musk deer and civet cat and coffee coming from the dung of civet cat, why should we be surprised by the fact that one the most expensive perfumes is actually vomit? Ambergris comes from the intestines of the sperm whales. It is actually a biliary secretion whose role has been puzzling the researches throughout time. Sperm whales feed exclusively on squids, t ... [read more >>]
	06 October 2007, 13:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Spectacular Fossil Whale Fall
	A dead zebra in the African savanna means a fiesta for the vultures around. But if we're talking about dead whales, this fiesta can last for decades. And there are specialized marine communities which are adapted for this purpose. This is called whale fall and the first recognized one was in 1989 in southern California. Whale carcasses falling to the deep-ocean floor form an oasis of life in a deserted area, attracting a speciali ... [read more >>]
	21 September 2007, 05:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Did the Whales Evolve Their Sonar?
	For a long time now, humans have been fascinated by the spectacular fights between the huge sperm whales and giant squids, that triggered the myth of the kraken, the island big sea monster. But how do the whales manage to detect the squids in the complete darkness of the deep ocean? It's all in their ultrasound sonar. A team at the University of California, Berkeley discovered how dolphins and other toothed whales develop their so ... [read more >>]
	11 September 2007, 07:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

10 Weird Types of Sleeping
	All vertebrates sleep, from fish to mammals. And even some invertebrates, like the insects. During sleep, the body enters in a predominantly anabolic phase, when it develops, grows, heals and builds muscle; the immune system is at its peak (that's why, when we’re ill, we wake up without the cold). The lack of sleep impairs the functioning of the brain. Sleep is necessary to organize the memories we amass during the day and to give ... [read more >>]
	22 August 2007, 13:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Over 50 % of the Whales Killed Annually by the Japanese Whalers Are Pregnant!
	Japan is considered one of the nations with the highest technology and assumes one of the highest life standards. That's why it's a shame that Japan is still defying the international ban of commercial whaling, which could lead to the extinction of 5 out of 13 great whale species. The abundance of whale meat delivered by a program aimed for the scientific research is really interesting, as Japan actually defines its annual ... [read more >>]
	31 July 2007, 04:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A 3,000 Years Old Mortuary Whale Bone Mask
	During the Ice Age these islands could have formed a bridge from Asia to America and this is how the first Americans entered North America about 15,000 years ago. But modern native inhabitants, the Aleutians, are not related to those early Americans: they come more recently from Asia and are related to the Eskimals. Now archaeologists have found in the islands a whalebone mask, probably broken during an Aleut funeral 3,000 years ago. ... [read more >>]
	30 July 2007, 05:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Car-Sized Tongue Whale Stranded on Alaska
	It is true that a whale's tongue can be 3 tons heavy but that of a humpback whale wrecked Wednesday on the steep, rocky shores of Admiralty Island (south of Juneau, southeast Alaska) was really unusual: its swollen tongue was the size of a small car! It is believed that a collision with a ship forced air into the humpback's tongue, causing its swelling and the death of the 40-foot (12-meter) male. "The humpb ... [read more >>]
	19 July 2007, 04:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Right Whale Found in Japan
	This is a strange coincidence: the oldest remains of a right whale have been found in the only country still hunting whales against the international law. A museum in Nagano prefecture (180 km (110 mi) northwest of Tokyo) possesses the most ancient right whale fossils, at least 5 million years old. "Researchers working in Nagano prefecture estimate the fossilized skull bones and jaw of a right whale on display at the Sh ... [read more >>]
	05 July 2007, 02:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Do Sperm Whales Catch Squids?
	Squids have excellent eyesight, a keen sense of smell, and the ability to squirt jets of dark ink that mask their escape. But these skills provide little protection against toothed whales, like the sperm whale, which hunt them ruthlessly and easily. "The numbers of squid that are eaten by sperm whales far exceed those harvested by men for food on a worldwide basis," said squid-expert Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laborato ... [read more >>]
	28 June 2007, 17:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

An Over 100 Years Old Harpoon Tip Found in a Recently Killed Whale
	Scientists imagined that giant whales can live up to 80 years. This has proven wrong: a 50-ton bowhead whale recently captured off the Alaskan coast in May had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck revealing survival to a similar hunt over a century ago. Under the whale's blubber a 3½-inch (9 cm) arrow-shaped projectile was found, offering the researchers a new perspective on the whale’s age, estimated between 115 and 130 years ol ... [read more >>]
	13 June 2007, 04:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Which is the Cause of the "Stinky Whale"?
	Stopping whale meat consume is a bitter fight led against the Japanese mentality. But in some cases, unwittingly whales have a method of their own. 10 % of the gray whales hunted by Russian aboriginals from Chukotka are inedible due to the rancid stench of their meat and this is increasing. Still, researchers cannot say if it is due to chemical contamination or disease. International Whaling Commission (IWC) signaled the same proble ... [read more >>]
	08 June 2007, 07:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Whale Meat Consume: Cruelty or Anachronic Cultural Issue?
	If you're from Europe or North America, it would be simply unthinkable for you to eat whale meat. But in Japan, it is just another usual custom. Whale meat may not be found everywhere – as tuna or tofu are – but in every city you may find at least one restaurant which serves it. It is really interesting the abundance of whale meat delivered by a program aimed for the scientific research, as Japan, in fact defines its annual w ... [read more >>]
	28 May 2007, 14:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Navy Sonar Kills The Orcas and Other Whales
	Biologists got alarmed when the killer whales (orcas) of Washington State's Puget Sound started disappearing. Using high technology supersensitive microphones, Ken Balcomb has been eavesdropping on the region's resident killer whales. Unlike migratory orcas, these ones spend their whole lives among sounds. Years of research revealed a disturbing trend: healthy adult orcas were disappearing without a precise rea ... [read more >>]
	08 May 2007, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Largest Journeys for Sex
	Whales could feel insulted when we call an overweight person “whale”, because, unlike people, these mammals move a lot. In fact, the longest movement of any mammal, as a recent research detected, belongs to humpback whales which migrate over 5,100 miles (8,300 km) from their feeding areas off Antarctica to the mating zones off Costa Rica. This record route is unchallenged by any mammal and few birds have longer migration j ... [read more >>]
	11 April 2007, 07:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Ancient Italy Swarmed with Whales ...
	Italian archaeologists have dug the fossil skeleton of a 4 million-year-old whale in the Tuscan countryside, a found that comes to shed a light on reconstructing the image of the prehistoric sea that once covered the peninsula. The 33-foot (10-meter) fossil, dated to the Pliocene epoch, was discovered in almost perfect order, with only the jaw bones displaced, explained paleontologists with the Museum of Natural History in Florence. ... [read more >>]
	04 April 2007, 04:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Whales' Records
	Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) emerged 50 million years ago. Believe it or not, they have a common origin with …the hippopotamus (!), not with the land predators. Currently, there are 15 species of baleen whales and 74 toothed whales (out of which 42 are dolphins). The largest whale (and animal that has ever existed) is the blue whale: it can reach 33 m (100 ft) in length and 181 tons, but it normally reaches 27-28 m (81-84 ft) in ... [read more >>]
	16 March 2007, 10:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Do Sperm Whales Hunt the Giant Squids?
	The epic fights between sperm whales and giant squids witnessed by sailors fired the imagination of many biologists and nature lovers, with their mysterious cover. And this especially because sperm whales are the largest predator in the world, 18 m (59 ft) long and 50 tons weight, with a huge appetite for squids, yet very little is known about their feeding behavior. These whales are estimated to eat more than 220 billion pounds ... [read more >>]
	12 March 2007, 11:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia