136 Items Tagged

Whales

The sperm whale population around Dominica is one of the most closely studied in the world.

Dominica's Sperm Whales Have a Surprising Superpower: Poop

Around the Caribbean island nation, local cetaceans have some unique traits, including doubling down on defecation.

Ashley Stimpson November 27, 2023

Daniel Kraus, author of the novel <em>Whalefall</em>.

Podcast: A Whale of a Tale with Daniel Kraus

We get the backstory to the new novel Whalefall, about a man who finds himself in the belly of a sperm whale.

The Podcast Team August 21, 2023

Hvalfjarðarvegur, Iceland

Beached Whalers

Two whaling vessels that were sunk by an anti-whaling organization in 1986 now sit on the shore of this beautiful fjord.

A reconstruction of <em>P. colossus</em> shows it in its coastal habitat. The head is an educated guess because a skull has not been found yet.

Paleontologists in Peru Discover What Might Be the 'Chonkiest Whale Ever'

And maybe the heaviest animal the world has ever seen.

Roxanne Hoorn August 2, 2023

Orca pods can develop their own cultures that result in distinctive behaviors, including cooperation with humans.

The Killer Whales of Eden and the 'Law of the Tongue'

Orcas and humans once hunted together in southeastern Australia, until their millennia-old relationship broke down.

Roxanne Hoorn October 11, 2023

West Mifflin, Pennsylvania

The Blue Whale of Noah's Ark

The last funhouse of its kind, where guests enter through the mouth of an 80-year-old blue whale.

Albany's Historic Whaling Station

Frenchman Bay, Australia

Albany's Historic Whaling Station

Home to the last shore-based whaling station in Australia.

Edrom, Australia

Davidson Whaling Station

The site where whalers teamed up with orcas to hunt baleen whales.

The Black Sea at Cape Kaliakra, Bulgaria.

The Paratethys Sea Was the Largest Lake in Earth’s History

The Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas are the last surviving fragments of a body of water that stretched from Austria to Turkmenistan.

Frank Jacobs, Big Think March 3, 2023

Wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory became obsessed with going to Antarctica to capture the largest known whale gatherings in the world.

Capturing the Mysterious Antarctic Whale Gathering on Film

No one was sure about the size of these almost-mythical wildlife events—until we got it all on camera.

Bertie Gregory January 12, 2023

Fads—like, for instance, wearing a dead salmon as a hat—can spread within a trendsetter's pod and to other pods the group interacts with.

How Young Killer Whales Became Hooligans

Yes, orcas have viral cultural trends, too.

Shoshi Parks September 29, 2022

Along the Vietnamese coast, temples constructed in reverence to whales and other marine mammals—such as this one in Phan Thiet—house valuable information on the country’s little-studied cetaceans.

How Vietnam’s Ancient Whale Temples Are Helping Science

For centuries, hundreds of shrines have preserved crucial information about the marine mammals' diversity and distribution.

Anne Pinto-Rodrigues September 19, 2022

Detail of Whalebone Fence on the Wadden Sea island of Rømø

Rømø, Denmark

Whale Jawbone Fence

Danish whalers once brought back whale bones to use as building materials in places where wood was scarce.

Podcast: The Blue Whale of Catoosa

Join us for a daily celebration of the world’s most wondrous, unexpected, even strange places.

The Podcast Team August 4, 2022

The Whale Monument

Emerging from the sidewalk, this sculpture of a whale commemorates the importance of baleen in traditional Japanese puppetry.

A pod of short-finned pilot whales.

A Whale of a Tale about a Science Breakthrough Ignored for Decades

In 1981, Helene Marsh and her mentor discovered the truth about a basic biological process—but it took many researchers years to accept it.

Madeline Bodin March 17, 2022

There are thought to be more than 300 belugas in captivity across 13 different countries, with the highest number housed in Russia, Japan, China, Ukraine, Canada, and the United States.

The Tricky Business of Saving a Baby Beluga

For the first time, scientists were able to save a young whale stranded in Cook Inlet. What should happen next?

Sarah Durn February 7, 2022

Whale tails

South Burlington, Vermont

'Reverence' (Whales Tails)

A pair of black granite tails dive into a sea of grass in landlocked Vermont.