Speaker 2
few enough of them that this website can track most all of them? Like what kind of numbers are we talking? Mmm,
Speaker 1
yeah, that's a great question. So if we're looking at the North Pacific humpback whales, the population is between 25 and 30,000. And as our paper revealed, we know photographically most of those whales that are alive today, which is pretty cool. And so it depends on on human presence. US are known, and then going down from the breeding ground. So you have the North Atlantic down to the Caribbean, you know, North Pacific here down to Mexico and Hawaii. And then you have other hotspots of activity like Australia, even the Antarctic with more cruises going down there. So it is biased towards where the people are and where the research is and where the whale watching is. Right,
Speaker 2
that makes sense. Plus there's gonna be the whale that never got a cell phone and doesn't have any social media, so you're not gonna be able to track its habits that way. This privacy one from Ron Swanson of whales.
Speaker 2
what's going on in the world of whales? Let's see, where should we start? There was a lone orca, took on great white sharks, and that's not normal. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1
Yes. Yes. Killer whale was observed to successfully hunt and kill a great white shark off South Africa. Holy
Speaker 2
crap. Is that like just normal? Well,
Speaker 1
I mean, it's normal for killer whales to hunt and kill all types of prey. They have been known to kill great white sharks before, but the unusual thing about this occurrence was that it was a single killer whale. Killer whales are very social. Usually they hunt in groups. They hunt with their pod members, but in this case, it was a single killer whale, a male, that took down this great white shark.
Speaker 2
What a badass. Is that good or bad? I don't know. And maybe it's bad though if they should be socializing more. Too much internet? Well,
Speaker 1
you know, from the killer whales perspective, it's good, you know, it got a great meal. And I think it just reminds us of the kind of the uniqueness of killer whales. And I talk about this with my students a lot as well. If you want to talk about like the king of the ocean, so to speak, I would say it's the killer whale because they can take down great white sharks, large whales. I mean, they could pretty much take down anything. And now with this study showed us is that even acting alone, they can take down some of the fiercest animals in the ocean.
Speaker 2
Wow. I might have misremembered. I was, I thought the whole whale thing was like a misnomer. You know, we named it that and then we're wrong or something like the whole Iceland Greenland thing. Maybe I don't know. I just, I thought it was something like that. But no, they're actually killers. It sounds like they're fierce killers.
Speaker 1
They are in their name actually comes from their originally named to be killers of whales because they hunt. Like I said, they can take down a minke whale, humpback whale, other large species. And then through time, it got shortened to killer whales. But it's important to note that while they are fierce predators to other ocean species, there has never been a single documented attack of a killer whale on a human in the wild. So we should not have any reason to fear them. No.
Speaker 2
Wow. Are we just, we're just too measly for them? Are they like not even worth the calories to eat our tiny bodies?
Speaker 1
It could be. It could be. If only we could ask them.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Now I feel left out. Like maybe we could ask them, like, is there something wrong with me? Is something I can do to be more edible or? Yeah,
Speaker 1
we probably don't want to cross that. Cross that grid. It's pretty good where it's at, you know, right now.
Speaker 2
That's crazy. Are they in the same areas that I've just, that is kind of curious in all of recorded history, I guess, that that's never happened. Why do you think that is? I'm curious. The
Speaker 1
first thing that comes to mind is that killer whales, they are, they are so intelligent and I've studied a variety of, of animals from primates to whales and other marine mammals. And looking at killer whales, they really are the epitome of intelligence in an animal. And I think they recognize, I think they can recognize other maybe intelligent species. Maybe they can recognize that we are not harmful to them. I mean, there is the caveat of the devastation of the killer whales off Washington.
Speaker 2
No one tell them about climate change, please. And they find out they're going to be pissed. Oh my God.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. But we have nothing to fear from killer whales as human. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Or they're so smart they destroy the evidence. That could be it too. Who? You
Speaker 1
know, we'll never know.
Speaker 2
I'll jump on the case. Next on the on the whale list here on our whale agenda, menopause in whales. There's a study. What can you tell us about that? Well,
Speaker 1
it was a really cool study that came out in Nature relatively recently and it discussed the presence of menopause in different whale species and the potential reasons for that. And one of the cool things about the study is that it highlighted that, well, a couple things. One, menopause is relatively rare amongst all animals. Of course, humans have menopause. Some great apes have menopause, but the group of animals where menopause is most common is actually in whales, which the study revealed.
Speaker 2
That's interesting. Yeah. So yeah, what's going on? Is it because of like, does lifespan have a bit to do with that? I'm trying to think because I, it does seem a little odd just from an evolutionary perspective.
Speaker 1
It does, right? So because it doesn't make sense if the goal of life, you know, from an evolutionary perspective is to reproduce and pass on your genes, why would you still live without reproducing? But yes, so these animals that have menopause tend to have longer life spans, but that's not the only determinant because whales that can live for very long periods of time, like blue whales or bowhead whales, we don't have evidence of menopause in them. So that's not the only determinant. A big determinant is the societies that these animals live in. So the whales that have, that are known currently to have menopause, so we have killer whales, pilot whales, belugas, and narwhals are the main ones. They live in tight family units. And so what this does is it enables a female to still have a so-called purpose after she stops reproducing because she can help take care of grandchildren and so on. And individuals that have her genes, you know, in some way, she can still help to support them even though she's not reproducing herself. Yeah,
Speaker 2
now what happens in the whale species that don't have it? I mean, are they just fertile forever or is there some other thing that happens? As
Speaker 1
far as we know, they can continue to reproduce until they die. But a big asterisk there though, is that for some of these whales, I think we just don't have enough data. These whales, some of them live the lifespan of a human and it just takes a long time to study like an individual whale throughout its life to determine if and when it might stop reproducing. So my hunch is that we are going to start to uncover more examples of menopause as we continue long term studies of these animals.
Speaker 2
what, uh, what else did this study show? Just that it was, it just kind of documenting that this happens or was there more to it?
Speaker 1
Right. It was documenting that it happened again with the emphasis on these whale species. And then it was, it considered different hypotheses for why menopause should evolve. And the hypothesis that the paper honed in on as the most likely reason was this like the grandmother hypothesis. So staying alive to invest your energy, not in reproduction, but to help in the survival of your descendants.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Oh, whale grandma. That sounds, that sounds delightful. Nothing better. Cozy whale grandmother's house, you know, dropping off the whale kids over there. Some knitting. That's so fascinating though. Okay. So Lydia is very curious to learn and I as well about, there seems to be some homosexual whale activity documented out there and that's always so funny. There's always the cute like penguin couples. I feel like that's, that's commonly documented. Well, this was
Speaker 1
such an exciting study for many reasons. And so the study was an observation of two humpback whales that are both known to be males. And they were actually observed with underwater footage mating. So one male had his penis in the other male. And I mean, this is really exciting for a few reasons. One is that it just reaffirms the the prevalence of homosexual behavior across animal taxa. I mean, it's actually pretty common. And then two, we still have never observed mating between a male and female humpback whales. I mean, humpback whales. Yes.
Speaker 2
I did not know that. That's amazing. So the only mating that we have is almost sexual that we have evidence of is almost actually that's fantastic. Yes. Isn't it? I'm actually now a heterosexual whale truther. I think they're only gay. There's a prove me wrong. I'm sorry. Prove me wrong. Right.
Speaker 1
I mean, there you go. There's no empirical evidence. Yeah for males and females actually mating.
Speaker 2
I think we should go after the fundamentalists and say like, actually everyone should be gay. Look at nature and look at the whales. We'll turn it back on them, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 1
Or, you know, maybe the males and females just want their privacy and they, and they go off where there's no one around. But yeah, so it's pretty, it's pretty cool. And, and, you know, we can, we can surmise from this, this male male behavior, the, you know, the mating position and behavior between a male and a female, which, which was pretty cool. So I read that study, and the day it came out, you know, came to me from several different directions. And then by the end of the day, I realized that one of the males in there, in that paper, the male that was being mated with, if I can say that, so like the male under the other whale is actually a whale I know.
Speaker 2
And was that awkward at all? Yeah, it's a whale I know. Sorry. That's
Speaker 1
funny. So it's a whale. His formal ID is 2557, and then his nickname is Bohemian. And he's a whale I've photographed up here in Juneau, and we even took a biopsy sample from him to learn more about his stress and reproductive hormones. And the last time I documented him was in August 2021 up here in Juneau. And this photograph, this event was described in Hawaii in January of 2022. And then I have not seen Bohemian since 2021. And you always kind of wonder if it's a whale you usually see in the study area, you know, what's going on with them? Are they just feeding someplace else this year? What's going on? So one of the things- Do they have a secret
Speaker 2
life as a gay whale?
Speaker 1
So- Yeah. Well, I mean, it turns out, you
Speaker 2
know, Bohemian.
Speaker 1
We don't know, but- That'd be so great. But this imagery, it showed that Bohemian had to sustain a pretty substantial injury to his jaw. He also looked in not great body condition in those photos. He had a pale skin color, which is an indication of not being so healthy, and he was thin. Putting the pieces together, the fact that we haven't seen him on the breeding grounds, he was looking poorly six months after I saw him up here the last time. Going back to Happy Whale, he has not been seen on Happy Whale. We think he actually died. Yeah. I know. I know. So it's kind of a bittersweet story. It gives us more insight into his life. And at least we know, you know, maybe what happened. He sustained, it seems like maybe it was a ship strike. Oh no. Yeah. Yeah.