Marine Mammals, features and articles | Educational Science

Feb 6, 2021

Stressful animation shows blue whale dodging hundreds of ships while trying to feed

A blue whale in Chile had a rough week, zigging and zagging at a hectic pace as it dodged moving ships in a busy gulf, as seen in a new and dizzying visualization of the behemoth’s attempt to feed without getting struck by any of the swiftly moving vessels nearby....

Feb 19, 2021

Critically endangered baby whale washes up dead on Florida coast

A critically endangered North Atlantic right whale calf washed up dead on a beach in Florida on Feb. 13, in the latest blow to the dwindling species. The male calf was 22 feet (7 meters) long and possibly just 2 months old when it was found with boat wounds on...

Feb 23, 2021

40 beached whales 'refloated' in New Zealand

Hundreds of people in New Zealand worked together to successfully refloat 40 long-finned pilot whales that stranded on a remote beach, meaning they returned the animals to open water, The Associated Press (AP) reported. The whales did not swim out into the deeper ocean, however, so some conservationists are worried...

Mar 12, 2021

Beached sperm whale in Australia shows scars from tussle with a giant squid

A huge dead whale rotting away on an island Down Under is attracting locals and even thieves, but the rancid smell of its decomposing corpse is keeping many of them at bay. One man who went to see the whale said its decaying blubber ruined his sneakers, and others have...

Mar 19, 2021

Sperm whales outwitted 19th-century whalers by sharing evasive tactics

Catching a sperm whale during the 19th century was much harder than even Moby Dick showed it to be. That's because sperm whales weren't just capable of learning the best ways to evade the whalers' ships, they could quickly share this information with other whales, too, according to a study...

Apr 5, 2021

'Chaos of clicks and sounds from below' as 70 orcas kill blue whale

In an hours-long struggle, as many as 70 killer whales hunted down and killed a blue whale off the southwestern coast of Australia, according to a marine biologist who saw the astonishing, a little bit disturbing and truly mind blowing event take place. At first, it seemed like a normal...

Apr 14, 2021

Experts worried after 4 dead gray whales wash up around San Francisco

Four dead gray whales have washed up on the shores of the San Francisco Bay Area in just eight days, prompting fears that the species is under threat from human activity in the area. The first gray whale to wash up was an adult female that was discovered at San...

May 11, 2021

Baby minke whale euthanized after getting trapped in Thames River

An injured baby minke whale stranded in the River Thames was put down on Monday after rescuers lost all hope for its survival. The 10-foot-long (3 meters) whale calf was first discovered trapped inside a concrete lock in Richmond, London, on Sunday (May 9). Hundreds of people gathered to watch...

Jun 10, 2021

Nuclear bomb detectors uncover secret population of blue whales hiding in Indian Ocean

Scientists have discovered an entirely new population of pygmy blue whales in the Indian Ocean, which have managed to evade detection for decades despite their enormous size. Researchers uncovered the secretive cetaceans by analyzing acoustic data collected by an underwater nuclear bomb detection array, which revealed a unique song scientists...

Jun 13, 2021

Will humans ever learn to speak whale?

Sperm whales are among the loudest living animals on the planet, producing creaking, knocking and staccato clicking sounds to communicate with other whales that are a few feet to even a few hundred miles away. This symphony of patterned clicks, known as codas, might be sophisticated enough to qualify as...

Aug 6, 2021

Stranded minke whale stinks so bad it's like 'death in a dumpster'

An extremely stinky minke whale that washed ashore in Plymouth, Massachusetts, will now be carted off to a landfill. One local said the stench was so bad it was like death in a dumpster, according to news reports. The dead whale was first spotted July 17, bobbing 1.4 miles (2.3...

Aug 11, 2021

Sperm whales: The biggest toothed predator

Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) are the largest toothed whales, with enormous square-shaped heads and the biggest brains of any animal on Earth. These deep-divers are known for hunting down giant squid and other prey as deep as 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) below the ocean surface. Sperm whales are the only...

Aug 23, 2021

Megalodon's mortal attack on sperm whale revealed in ancient tooth

Millions of years ago, an ancient sperm whale had a very, very bad day when a megatoothed shark — possibly the fearsome Otodus megalodon or its ancestor Otodus chubutensis, the largest predatory sharks that ever lived — viciously attacked it in what is now North Carolina, a new study suggests....

Aug 25, 2021

Walking whale ancestor named after Egyptian god of death

A semiaquatic whale that lived 43 million years ago was so fearsome, paleontologists have named it after Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god of death. The newly discovered 10-foot-long (3 meters) species, dubbed Phiomicetus anubis, was a beast; When it was alive more than 43 million years ago, it both walked...

Sep 28, 2021

Dead humpback whale that beached in New York had human-caused injuries

A dead whale that recently washed up on a beach in Staten Island, New York, showed signs of human-caused injuries that may have contributed to its death, experts found. On Sept. 17, the male humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) was spotted floating belly-up in shallow water near the shore in Great...