WEBVTT - From the Vault: Thar She Blows, Part 1 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.760 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:09.880 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:12.760 And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time for 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:16.960 a vault episode. This one originally published on April twenty fifth, 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:19.360 twenty twenty three, and it's part one of our series. 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:21.480 Do we call this the Arsy Blows? I think it's 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:26.600 about the the spout of the whale we did. Yes, 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:28.680 all right, let's get in there. 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.919 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:45.040 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:45.919 name is Robert. 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:49.840 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So a few weeks back 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:53.199 on the show, we did a series of episodes on 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:57.320 the Pacific gray whale. That series was based on some 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:01.560 actual travels that you and your family did rob with Uh, 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:05.240 where you got to encounter these wonderful beasts up close. 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:08.440 But ever since then, I've had a bit of a 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:12.319 low grade whale fever, and so based on maybe not 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:16.360 physical travels in the world, but literary travels of the mind, 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:20.160 I've been drawn back to the subject of wales. Today 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:24.160 we are returning to talk not about a particular species 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:28.880 of whale, but about a particular anatomical feature common to wales, 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:33.720 the respiratory orifice of the cetacean, known as the spout 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.760 or the spiracle, or most commonly today, the blowhole. 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.119 That's right, one of the most famous features of the whale. 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:43.640 If you know nothing else about the whale. If your 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:47.720 knowledge of whale anatomy is limited to cartoons and emojis, 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:52.560 you know something of the spout. You may have the 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:54.760 wrong idea of what it's all about, and we'll get 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.240 into that in this episode. But you know that whales 0:01:57.360 --> 0:01:58.480 do this right. 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.800 The saying is not thar she filter feeds. The saying 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:05.640 is thar she blows right now. I actually became interested 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:09.680 in this subject because I was reading a chapter in 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:14.200 the great American whale novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:19.519 Basic plot summary. A wandering young man named Ishmael and 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:25.119 his new companion, queequeg enlist on a whale ship captained 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:28.480 by a man named Ahab, who is on a revenge 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:33.880 quest against a sperm whale that previously removed his leg. 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.160 A classic tale. Even if you're not familiar with the 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:39.560 book itself, you've probably seen one of the many film 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:40.919 adaptations over the years. 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:43.800 Yes, though, you know, if you just watch a movie, 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:46.880 there is a quality to the text of Moby Dick 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.360 that probably won't quite come across, because this is not 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.679 a strictly plot oriented story. It's not a novel where 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:56.000 the action of the plot always just kind of proceeds 0:02:56.040 --> 0:03:00.200 ahead at a predictable pace. Many chapters of this book 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:07.080 are more like self contained informational or meditational essays on 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.240 subjects of all kinds. So there are little There are 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:12.920 chapters that are essays about the tackle and equipment of 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.720 whaling vessels, the monkey rope, the harpoon that, you know, 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.400 all the different things. There are chapters about the accuracy 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:25.839 or relative lack thereof, of whale illustrations in books. There's 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.840 a chapter about clam chowder. There are chapters about whale heads. 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.160 There's one chapter where he does phrenology on a whale head. 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:38.920 There are chapters about whale skin, whale tails, et cetera. Now, 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:43.240 when it comes to the quote seatology of Moby Dick, 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:46.680 it seems to be Melville is all over the place, 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.760 sourcing his information in some cases from published works of 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:55.000 naturalists of his day, which was of course of you know, 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:57.480 we would judge by the scientific standards of today of 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.840 mixed quality to begin with, and in other cases he 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:03.440 seems to be relying on kind of the trade knowledge 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:08.120 of sailors and whalemen. Some of his biological observations I 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:13.200 think seem fairly keen, and others are bizarre or downright implausible. 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.040 A very commonly cited example, though I don't know if 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.200 this represents the personal belief of Melville. Of the author, 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.200 the narrator, Ishmael is firmly committed to the claim that 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:27.200 whales are fish. They are not, they're mammals. In fact, 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:30.400 I was reading about this in a paper called Herman 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:34.560 Melville Marine Biologist by Harold Morowitz, published in The Biological 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:39.280 Bulletin in twenty eleven. About the idea that whales are mammals, 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:43.320 Morowitz writes, quote, this was not a new finding. Aristotle 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:47.320 in History of Animals, some twenty two hundred years earlier. Oh. Actually, 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:52.240 he's saying earlier than Linaeus had noticed the difference between 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:55.840 members of the whales and porpoises and other marine inhabitants. 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.799 The fish. He based this distinction on the cetaceans having 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.080 the a malian properties of being warm blooded breathing air 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:07.000 through lungs and feeding the young through memory glands Melville, 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:11.599 though through his spokesman Ishmael, strongly disagreed and was willing 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.680 to place the anecdotal knowledge of a seaman against the 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:18.400 formal knowledge of academics. He insists that a whale is quote, 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.360 a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:23.679 Well, I guess this kind of falls into the whole 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:28.680 semen versus landsman sort of thing, right, Like what would Aristotle? No, 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.120 he never he never served on a whaling vessel. 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:33.360 That's right. This kind of came up in our Grey 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.160 Whale series two. What was the context? So was it 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:40.040 arguments about how aggressive actually the gray whale is. 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:44.120 Yeah, if you go by the accounts of whalers who 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.880 did get to you know, throw in their their their, their, 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:52.200 their two cents and name various things about whales as well. Yeah, 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:55.279 according to them, the gray whale is just an absolute monster, 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.719 you know that that would just absolutely destroy anything in 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:02.040 its path, which it's certainly capable of, as we discuss, 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:06.159 if it has been provoked. But if it's not provoked, 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.599 it as a very peaceful and curious creature. Right. 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:12.480 So, anyway, the narrator Ishmael's claims about whales, while in 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:16.600 my opinion always fascinating, are a mixed bag of some 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:22.640 sharp observations, some weird untruths, as well as ambiguous claims 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.560 somewhere in the middle. And I came across a number 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:29.480 of all of the above recently in chapter eighty five 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:33.120 of this book, which is called The Fountain. This chapter 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:37.320 is a consideration of the blowhole of the whale and 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:40.800 the towering exhalations from it, which, by the way, are 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:44.520 of great significance to whalers, because the spoutings of the 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.120 blowhole are what whalers use to cite the whales out 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:49.720 on the open sea and track them down. 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:53.760 Yeah, thus Varsy blows right. I love that this chapter 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.000 is called the Fountain because, as we'll discuss, like even 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:58.159 the title this chapter is deceptive. 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:02.320 Right, So you don't mind. I'm gonna set the themes 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:04.719 here by reading the first couple of paragraphs of this 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:06.039 chapter excellently. 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:09.040 Are you gonna use the sailor voice from that? I'm gonna. 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:13.880 I'm not gonna do pirate voice. Okay, I'm not strong enough. Okay. 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.320 So this is from Moby Dick by Herman Melville the 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.480 chapter the Fountain, that for six thousand years, and no 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:23.800 one knows how many millions of ages before, the great 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:27.400 whales should have been spouting all over the sea and 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:31.160 sprinkling and mystifying the gardens of the deep, as with 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:35.000 so many sprinkling or mystifying pots. And that for some 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:38.880 centuries back thousands of hunters should have been close by 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:42.760 the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings. 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:45.880 That all this should be. And yet that down to 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:49.520 this blessed minute fifteen and a quarter minutes past one 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:53.320 o'clock pm on this sixteenth day of December eighty eighteen 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.720 fifty one, it should still remain a problem whether these 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:02.800 spoutings are after all really water or nothing but vapor. 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:06.400 This is surely a noteworthy thing. And then, skipping a 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:10.240 bit into the next paragraph, everyone knows that by the 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:14.480 peculiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes in general 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.960 breathe the air, which at all times is combined with 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.520 the element in which they swim. Hence, a herring or 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.520 a cod might live a century and never once raise 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:28.280 its head above the surface, but owing to his marked 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:32.640 internal structure which gives him regular lungs like a human being's. 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:37.240 The whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:42.160 in the open atmosphere, wherefore the necessity for his periodical 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.720 visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:49.640 degree breathe through his mouth, for in his ordinary attitude, 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.600 the sperm whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.280 beneath the surface. And what is still more, his windpipe 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:00.280 has no connection with his mouth. No, he breathes through 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:03.560 his spiracle alone, and this is on the top of 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:04.120 his head. 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.160 Now, so far, so good. I mean, nothing too out 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:08.520 of whack and all that, I think. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:12.079 Oh sure, And I think this does help give you 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.079 a sense of some of the wide eyed admiration and 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:18.679 the power of the mystery in describing whales at this 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:22.640 time when, like documentary footage was not a thing that existed. 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.960 Yet you know, people couldn't like see planet Earth and 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:28.800 see what whales looked like. So you know, most people 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.960 probably never would have seen any whale in person. Even 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.160 if you had, you probably would have only seen them, 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.760 you know, breaching the surface occasionally or spouting from below. 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:41.320 Like you wouldn't have the kind of familiarity with whales 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:44.800 that even the average person has today just through being 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:46.880 able to see them in movies and documentaries. 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:50.480 Right, and of course, depending on when you're trying, you're 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.280 looking out through the ocean and potentially seeing a whale, 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.120 that the ability to see them might be greatly reduced 0:09:56.120 --> 0:10:01.480 by human whaling enterprise, which you know certainly initially greatly 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:03.720 reduced the number of whales that would have been close 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:06.600 to shore and then eventually got into those populations that 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:07.520 were further from shore. 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:11.920 Yeah. Now, so this chapter on the fountain, on one hand, 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.000 it simply made me want to investigate the blowhole and 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:18.719 whale respiration as a subject in itself, which we will do. 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:23.400 But this chapter also raises a number of controversies and 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:27.640 strange claims that I wanted to further investigate. One of 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:32.679 the controversies that Melville opens the chapter by acknowledging is 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:35.800 the question of what is the spout or what is 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:37.320 it that comes out of the spout? I guess it 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:39.920 depends on what you're using the word spout to refer 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:43.120 to there, But yeah, what is coming out of the blowhole? 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.840 Is it water or is it, as Ishmael says, quote, 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:49.800 nothing but vapor that's a question that did seem to 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.480 be a live one to some degree in Melville's day. 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.240 But also as far as Strange claims go, here's one 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:58.120 for you I want to read from later in the chapter. 0:10:58.200 --> 0:10:59.040 Are you ready, Rob? 0:10:59.440 --> 0:10:59.640 Yes? 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.560 Okay, so he says, quote. Nor is it at all 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:06.640 prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching the 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:10.080 precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:13.760 for him to be peering into it and putting his 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:16.880 face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.720 this fountain and fill it and bring it away. For 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.520 even when coming into slight contact with the outer vapory 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:27.120 shreds of the jet, which will often happen, your skin 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.800 will feverishly smart from the acridness of the thing so 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:34.480 touching it. And I know one who, coming into still 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:38.520 closer contact with the spout, whether with some scientific object 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.560 in view or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:46.800 off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen the 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:51.320 spout is deemed poisonous, they try to evade it. Another 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:53.640 thing I have heard it said, and I do not 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:56.680 much doubt it that if the jet is fairly spouted 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:00.400 into your eyes, it will blind you. The wise thing 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:03.520 the investigator can do, then, it seems to me, is 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:08.680 to let this deadly spout alone. Okay, so I read 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:10.679 that and I was like, what is going on here? 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.000 That this sounds wrong to me. But I wonder if 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:16.480 there's some kind of basis to it, or some way 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:19.280 this rumor could have gotten started that would be identifiable. 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:22.640 I don't know, So that's another thing I want to explore. 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:28.680 The allegedly deadly, poisonous blinding spout steals your power of sight, 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:31.680 melts away your flesh like xenomorph blood. 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:37.280 This is something else. This goes beyond discussions of water 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:43.640 versus mist, because this is just not true. And you know, 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.560 we mentioned my time with my family down in Mexico 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.400 getting to observe the gray whales. So when we were 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.480 out there, there would often be multiple gray whales around 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:55.679 the boat constantly, you know, breathing close to the surface. 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:59.280 And I should point out these were casual breaths. These 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:04.040 were not breaths that were occurring after deep dive or 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:09.480 anything like that, but still pretty explosive exhalations, a lot 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.160 of mist floating around in the air. I definitely got 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:16.360 whale spout on me from these mists, and I saw 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:20.880 on more than one occasion somebody take a rather stiff 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.440 blast of the whale spout directly in the face. Now, 0:13:24.480 --> 0:13:27.000 I don't recall if they had sunglasses on or what, 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:30.559 but it was it was alarming, but it wasn't anything 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:33.880 that caused undue grief or stress. It was one of 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:36.720 those things you kind of laugh about afterwards you wash 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.720 off your face. And some of my fellow whale watchers, 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:42.360 they really took it as kind of a point of pride, 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:44.120 you know, they're like, it's they referred to it as 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.280 a kind of baptism. You know, you're just say you 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:49.400 wanted to get close to these creatures. It doesn't get 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:50.240 a lot closer than that. 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:52.520 But what about your skin? Did it peel off or 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:53.640 do you still have your skin on? 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:56.840 I still have all, I mean all my skin was intact. 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:00.440 Following each of these episodes out on the water, people 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:03.400 who were blasted full on in the face also were fine. 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.319 So yeah, I mean, the only thing that comes to 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:08.280 mind is, I guess it seems possible that someone could 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:11.520 have in some sort of an allergic reaction to something 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:15.600 in the whale spout, But I've never heard it as 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:16.440 actually occurring. 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.000 Yeah, it seems to be based on everything I've read 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:21.760 that You're right. I could not find any evidence that 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:25.440 what comes out of a whales blowhole is actually poisonous 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.280 or acrid to the point that it will burn your 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:31.040 skin away. But we can still come back to this, 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:33.320 and I don't know, maybe at least try to investigate 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:36.520 anything we can figure out about the claim itself, despite 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:38.440 the fact that it seems obviously not true. 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:51.800 Right, let's get into the basic science of whale spout 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:55.600 or whale blow. What is whale blow Well, it's discussed 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.960 by Mark Carwardine in the Handbook of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.400 an excellent that I referred to several times in our 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:06.160 previous series on the gray whale. Whale blow or whale 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:09.200 spout refers to both the whale's act of breathing explosive 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:14.160 exhalation followed by immediate inhalation, and also it refers to 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.479 the visible misty cloud that hangs in the air afterwards. 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.320 Quote condensed water, a fine spray of mucus from inside 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.920 the lungs, and seawater trapped in the blowholes. And I 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:26.720 think this was one of the main reasons that I 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:31.640 did take a little extra care to avoid staring down 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:33.680 over the side of the boat at a blowhole because 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:35.520 I did not want to be sneezed full on in 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:40.280 the face by one of these leviathans. But I was 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:43.760 not deathly afraid of it and fearful of my sight. 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.080 Well, sure, and you might want to avoid that, not 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.600 just because of the forcefulness of the blow but for 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.000 another I mean, one of the same reasons you wouldn't 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:54.400 want a human to sneeze in your face, which is 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:58.120 that like when somebody sneezes that mucus might contain significant 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:00.840 loading of bacteria, and yeah, you don't know what that's 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:01.240 going to be. 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:05.200 Yeah, Yeah, So I avoided it, but I also didn't 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:07.320 feel bad about I certainly got plenty of the mist 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:09.960 on me, because if you have multiple gray whales in 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:12.520 your vicinity, you're just in a cloud of the stuff. 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:15.480 So it's unavoidable. Yeah, so, you know, breaking it down 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.240 to brass tax here the obvious whales. Of course, as 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.400 we've stated aquatic mammals, they have to come to the 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:23.880 surface to breathe, but hold their breath while underwater, and 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.720 according to Hammondadol in the book Whales Their Biology and Behavior. 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:31.280 Whales consciously control their breathing, unlike most mammals who are 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:35.440 reflex breathers. Like us. They breathe through their blowholes, which 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:40.240 are sometimes called their nares, which are essentially evolved nostrils 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:44.560 which can be muscularly opened and closed. And as the 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:47.120 authors point out quote, the air pressure in the nasal 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:49.960 passage is higher than the ambient pressure at the surface, 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.720 leading to the explosive release of air from the blowhole. 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:58.000 The exhaled air from the whales inside is warmer than 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:01.400 the surrounding air and carries moisture, which condenses into the 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:04.240 visible blow that so often is the first tell tale 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.119 sign of a whale. Now, as we've discussed in the 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.919 show before, baileen whales have two holes, while toothed whales 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:15.240 have only one. Baileane whales also have a raised blowhole 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:19.920 with a frontal splash guard. It's the explosive exhalation and 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:23.199 quick inhalation takes a mere second in the smaller whales 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:25.720 in just a few seconds in the giant, so there's 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:29.080 a real economy of breathing. In all of this, you 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:32.320 come up to the surface and Contrary to a lot 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.040 of the illustrations of whales, their whole head does not 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:37.919 come up. I mean, they can do some of this, 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.240 but it's not necessary for breathing. All they have to 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:41.800 do is just get the top of their head that 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.600 little blowhole above the water. To pull this off in 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:48.359 a manner of seconds. And according to the National Marine 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:51.680 Life Center, just one exhalation pretty much empties a whale's 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:55.800 entire lungs. One of our exhalations only empties part of 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:56.400 our lungs. 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.359 Now, this is an interesting fact that I thought was 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:01.280 worth looking at a little bit deeper, this thing about 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:04.919 whale lungs and capacity and the extent to which that 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:08.439 capacity is used. So I started thinking about the comparison 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:14.120 to underwater breath holding in humans. Most people who have 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.960 no special training can comfortably hold their breath underwater for 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:21.440 about a minute. I've seen estimates ranging from like one 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.440 to two minutes to thirty to ninety seconds. I don't 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:26.920 know if that depends on how old the population you're 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:29.520 looking at is, or you know, how physically fit they are, 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.119 but still, you know, the average person is not going 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:34.080 to be able to stay under that long. Maybe a 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:38.320 couple of minutes. Now with conditioning, humans can stay under 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:40.920 water a lot longer. I was actually I was trying 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:45.040 to find the current human record for underwater breath holding, 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.639 and according to Guinness World Records, the record holder is 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:54.840 a Croatian man named Budimir Shobot, who on March twenty seventh, 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:59.360 twenty twenty one, stayed underwater for twenty four minutes and 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:03.160 thirty seven seconds. And at first I was like, wait 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:07.479 a second, that just cannot be correct. That is too long. 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:11.560 That is more than two full playthroughs of the album 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.280 length version, not the single version of I'd Do Anything 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.960 for Love, but I won't do that. Can't imagine it. 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.639 And to some degree my instincts were confirmed because I 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:28.800 realized there's a big caveat here. Showbots record and many 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:31.359 other people who compete for this particular record. This was 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:38.280 for a special category of breath holding oxygen assisted voluntary 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:41.680 breath holding. So in this category, before you go under 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:45.680 the water, you can spend up to thirty minutes ventilating 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:49.479 with one hundred percent pure oxygen from a tank. So 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:55.560 this is a pre dive hyperventilation process to like superoxygenate 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:59.119 your body. Of course, one hundred percent pure oxygen's much 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:01.399 higher than the the content in the air. We normally 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:04.640 breathe at twenty one percent oxygen. So yeah, the people 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:07.560 who do this, they are super oxygenating their body before 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:11.080 they start. And also, of course this guy was highly trained. 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:13.800 He spent more than three years training six days a week. 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.080 So twenty four and a half minutes is the record 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:21.000 for this technology assisted hyper ventilation category. But I was 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.439 trying to find the not technology assisted version, and I 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:28.119 found a twenty twenty three article by a University of 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:33.040 Windsor kinesiologist named Anthony Bain, and he writes that the 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.960 record for breath holding if you don't pregame with pure oxygen, 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:41.320 is less than half that It is possibly eleven minutes 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:43.720 and thirty five seconds for men, which is a record 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:47.320 held by Stefan Mifsud. Though there's some dispute about this 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.360 one because there's also a guy named Bronco Petrovitch who 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.720 holds a record accredited by Guinness, but not by this 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:58.040 other organization, a governing body called the International Association for 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:01.040 the Development of Apnea, which aparently does some kind of 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.600 certification of these records. And I don't want to get 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.240 drawn into a knife fight about which record is legitimate. 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:12.040 But let's just say the unassisted record for men is 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:15.159 somewhere between the eleven to twelve minute range, and the 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:18.160 record for women is nine minutes and two seconds, held 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:20.240 by Natalia Mulkanova. 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:22.600 Yeah, we don't want to make any enemies of people 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:24.000 who can hold their breath this long. 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:26.840 That does sound dangerous. Just as a side note, speaking 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.440 of people who can hold their breath a shockingly long time. 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:34.160 This article also mentioned something I hadn't heard of at all, 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:38.840 Apparently in preparation for the filming of Avatar Too, The 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:43.760 Way of Water. The actress Kate Winslet trained in underwater 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.080 breath holding for several weeks, and on set she was 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:51.080 able to stay underwater for more than seven minutes, something 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:53.639 that I am sure, no matter how much I trained, 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.200 I could not do. She did this on camera too, 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:57.679 and you can watch a video of it. When she 0:21:57.720 --> 0:21:59.960 pops up at the end, she asks, am I dead? 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:01.680 So hat's off to Kate? 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:02.639 Wow. 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:04.679 By the way, did you see Way of Water? I 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:06.160 haven't seen it yet. I did. 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:09.879 Yeah. My family and I just doing the holidays. It 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:12.480 was super cold. One morning we got up and saw 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:17.640 a morning showing of Avatar two, complete with coffee and 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:21.080 multiple bathroom breaks because it's super long. But yeah, it's 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:24.040 fun and it's got space whales in it, so that's 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:24.840 kind of neat. 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:25.199 You know. 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.200 There are some whales that can stay underwater without breathing 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:30.199 longer than we can go in a movie without a 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:35.960 bathroom break, at least when there's coffee involved. Yes, But 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:38.760 while that is individual records, there are also there are 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:44.880 whole cultures of people who regularly do extended underwater free 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:47.960 diving and standard for a long period of time. I 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:50.800 was looking at one study quickly just to mention by 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:55.119 Ilardo at All published in the journal Cell in twenty 0:22:55.160 --> 0:22:59.800 eighteen called Physiological and Genetic adaptations to Diving in see Nomads, 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:05.119