Whale

Share Top Five March 27, 2019

Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. They are an informal grouping within the infraorder Cetacea, usually excluding dolphins and porpoises. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla with even-toed ungulates and their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, having diverged about 40 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have split apart around 34 million years ago. The whales comprise eight extant families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale), Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Physeteridae (the sperm whale), Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale), and Ziphiidae (the beaked whales),More info:wiki

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#10 Sperm Whales Have an “Eve”,More info:hakaimagazine

All of the sperm whales in the world descended from just one female who lived tens of thousands of years ago. That surprising result comes from an examination of the mitochondrial DNA of more than 1,600 sperm whales from all over the world. Fittingly, researchers have named her Eve.

Mitochondrial DNA is only passed from mother to child, explains the study’s lead author Alana Alexander, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas, who conducted the research while she was a doctoral student at Oregon State University (OSU).

#9 Over half of killer whale populations in the world are threatened by toxic man-made chemicals: Study,More info:abcnews

#8 The Rare Beauty of Dozens of Migrating Humpback Whales,More info:nationalgeographic

#7 The Great Whales of Costa Rica,More info:costarica-scuba

#6 ‘The whales have a big voice’: By suffering publicly, B.C.’s endangered orcas made a persuasive case against Trans Mountain,More info:thestar

VANCOUVER—They are icons of B.C.’s pristine coast and wild beauty.

They are on the brink of extinction. Only 75 remain.

And this summer, the heart-wrenching image of a mother orca carrying her dead newborn for weeks in the Salish Sea drove home the severity of their plight.

But in their suffering, the southern resident killer whales underlined the potentially grave risks the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project would have brought with its influx of tankers.

The orcas may well have saved themselves, and assisted the Indigenous and environmentalist groups in having the pipeline’s construction suspended while doing so.