Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time for
Speaker 2: a vault episode. This one originally published on April twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, and it's part one of our series.
Speaker 2: Do we call this the Arsy Blows? I think it's
Speaker 2: about the the spout of the whale we did. Yes,
Speaker 2: all right, let's get in there.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So a few weeks back
Speaker 2: on the show, we did a series of episodes on
Speaker 2: the Pacific gray whale. That series was based on some
Speaker 2: actual travels that you and your family did rob with Uh,
Speaker 2: where you got to encounter these wonderful beasts up close.
Speaker 2: But ever since then, I've had a bit of a
Speaker 2: low grade whale fever, and so based on maybe not
Speaker 2: physical travels in the world, but literary travels of the mind,
Speaker 2: I've been drawn back to the subject of wales. Today
Speaker 2: we are returning to talk not about a particular species
Speaker 2: of whale, but about a particular anatomical feature common to wales,
Speaker 2: the respiratory orifice of the cetacean, known as the spout
Speaker 2: or the spiracle, or most commonly today, the blowhole.
Speaker 1: That's right, one of the most famous features of the whale.
Speaker 1: If you know nothing else about the whale. If your
Speaker 1: knowledge of whale anatomy is limited to cartoons and emojis,
Speaker 1: you know something of the spout. You may have the
Speaker 1: wrong idea of what it's all about, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into that in this episode. But you know that whales
Speaker 1: do this right.
Speaker 2: The saying is not thar she filter feeds. The saying
Speaker 2: is thar she blows right now. I actually became interested
Speaker 2: in this subject because I was reading a chapter in
Speaker 2: the great American whale novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
Speaker 2: Basic plot summary. A wandering young man named Ishmael and
Speaker 2: his new companion, queequeg enlist on a whale ship captained
Speaker 2: by a man named Ahab, who is on a revenge
Speaker 2: quest against a sperm whale that previously removed his leg.
Speaker 1: A classic tale. Even if you're not familiar with the
Speaker 1: book itself, you've probably seen one of the many film
Speaker 1: adaptations over the years.
Speaker 2: Yes, though, you know, if you just watch a movie,
Speaker 2: there is a quality to the text of Moby Dick
Speaker 2: that probably won't quite come across, because this is not
Speaker 2: a strictly plot oriented story. It's not a novel where
Speaker 2: the action of the plot always just kind of proceeds
Speaker 2: ahead at a predictable pace. Many chapters of this book
Speaker 2: are more like self contained informational or meditational essays on
Speaker 2: subjects of all kinds. So there are little There are
Speaker 2: chapters that are essays about the tackle and equipment of
Speaker 2: whaling vessels, the monkey rope, the harpoon that, you know,
Speaker 2: all the different things. There are chapters about the accuracy
Speaker 2: or relative lack thereof, of whale illustrations in books. There's
Speaker 2: a chapter about clam chowder. There are chapters about whale heads.
Speaker 2: There's one chapter where he does phrenology on a whale head.
Speaker 2: There are chapters about whale skin, whale tails, et cetera. Now,
Speaker 2: when it comes to the quote seatology of Moby Dick,
Speaker 2: it seems to be Melville is all over the place,
Speaker 2: sourcing his information in some cases from published works of
Speaker 2: naturalists of his day, which was of course of you know,
Speaker 2: we would judge by the scientific standards of today of
Speaker 2: mixed quality to begin with, and in other cases he
Speaker 2: seems to be relying on kind of the trade knowledge
Speaker 2: of sailors and whalemen. Some of his biological observations I
Speaker 2: think seem fairly keen, and others are bizarre or downright implausible.
Speaker 2: A very commonly cited example, though I don't know if
Speaker 2: this represents the personal belief of Melville. Of the author,
Speaker 2: the narrator, Ishmael is firmly committed to the claim that
Speaker 2: whales are fish. They are not, they're mammals. In fact,
Speaker 2: I was reading about this in a paper called Herman
Speaker 2: Melville Marine Biologist by Harold Morowitz, published in The Biological
Speaker 2: Bulletin in twenty eleven. About the idea that whales are mammals,
Speaker 2: Morowitz writes, quote, this was not a new finding. Aristotle
Speaker 2: in History of Animals, some twenty two hundred years earlier. Oh. Actually,
Speaker 2: he's saying earlier than Linaeus had noticed the difference between
Speaker 2: members of the whales and porpoises and other marine inhabitants.
Speaker 2: The fish. He based this distinction on the cetaceans having
Speaker 2: the a malian properties of being warm blooded breathing air
Speaker 2: through lungs and feeding the young through memory glands Melville,
Speaker 2: though through his spokesman Ishmael, strongly disagreed and was willing
Speaker 2: to place the anecdotal knowledge of a seaman against the
Speaker 2: formal knowledge of academics. He insists that a whale is quote,
Speaker 2: a spouting fish with a horizontal tail.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess this kind of falls into the whole
Speaker 1: semen versus landsman sort of thing, right, Like what would Aristotle? No,
Speaker 1: he never he never served on a whaling vessel.
Speaker 2: That's right. This kind of came up in our Grey
Speaker 2: Whale series two. What was the context? So was it
Speaker 2: arguments about how aggressive actually the gray whale is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you go by the accounts of whalers who
Speaker 1: did get to you know, throw in their their their, their,
Speaker 1: their two cents and name various things about whales as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: according to them, the gray whale is just an absolute monster,
Speaker 1: you know that that would just absolutely destroy anything in
Speaker 1: its path, which it's certainly capable of, as we discuss,
Speaker 1: if it has been provoked. But if it's not provoked,
Speaker 1: it as a very peaceful and curious creature. Right.
Speaker 2: So, anyway, the narrator Ishmael's claims about whales, while in
Speaker 2: my opinion always fascinating, are a mixed bag of some
Speaker 2: sharp observations, some weird untruths, as well as ambiguous claims
Speaker 2: somewhere in the middle. And I came across a number
Speaker 2: of all of the above recently in chapter eighty five
Speaker 2: of this book, which is called The Fountain. This chapter
Speaker 2: is a consideration of the blowhole of the whale and
Speaker 2: the towering exhalations from it, which, by the way, are
Speaker 2: of great significance to whalers, because the spoutings of the
Speaker 2: blowhole are what whalers use to cite the whales out
Speaker 2: on the open sea and track them down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thus Varsy blows right. I love that this chapter
Speaker 1: is called the Fountain because, as we'll discuss, like even
Speaker 1: the title this chapter is deceptive.
Speaker 2: Right, So you don't mind. I'm gonna set the themes
Speaker 2: here by reading the first couple of paragraphs of this
Speaker 2: chapter excellently.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna use the sailor voice from that? I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna do pirate voice. Okay, I'm not strong enough. Okay.
Speaker 2: So this is from Moby Dick by Herman Melville the
Speaker 2: chapter the Fountain, that for six thousand years, and no
Speaker 2: one knows how many millions of ages before, the great
Speaker 2: whales should have been spouting all over the sea and
Speaker 2: sprinkling and mystifying the gardens of the deep, as with
Speaker 2: so many sprinkling or mystifying pots. And that for some
Speaker 2: centuries back thousands of hunters should have been close by
Speaker 2: the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings.
Speaker 2: That all this should be. And yet that down to
Speaker 2: this blessed minute fifteen and a quarter minutes past one
Speaker 2: o'clock pm on this sixteenth day of December eighty eighteen
Speaker 2: fifty one, it should still remain a problem whether these
Speaker 2: spoutings are after all really water or nothing but vapor.
Speaker 2: This is surely a noteworthy thing. And then, skipping a
Speaker 2: bit into the next paragraph, everyone knows that by the
Speaker 2: peculiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes in general
Speaker 2: breathe the air, which at all times is combined with
Speaker 2: the element in which they swim. Hence, a herring or
Speaker 2: a cod might live a century and never once raise
Speaker 2: its head above the surface, but owing to his marked
Speaker 2: internal structure which gives him regular lungs like a human being's.
Speaker 2: The whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air
Speaker 2: in the open atmosphere, wherefore the necessity for his periodical
Speaker 2: visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any
Speaker 2: degree breathe through his mouth, for in his ordinary attitude,
Speaker 2: the sperm whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet
Speaker 2: beneath the surface. And what is still more, his windpipe
Speaker 2: has no connection with his mouth. No, he breathes through
Speaker 2: his spiracle alone, and this is on the top of
Speaker 2: his head.
Speaker 1: Now, so far, so good. I mean, nothing too out
Speaker 1: of whack and all that, I think.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, And I think this does help give you
Speaker 2: a sense of some of the wide eyed admiration and
Speaker 2: the power of the mystery in describing whales at this
Speaker 2: time when, like documentary footage was not a thing that existed.
Speaker 2: Yet you know, people couldn't like see planet Earth and
Speaker 2: see what whales looked like. So you know, most people
Speaker 2: probably never would have seen any whale in person. Even
Speaker 2: if you had, you probably would have only seen them,
Speaker 2: you know, breaching the surface occasionally or spouting from below.
Speaker 2: Like you wouldn't have the kind of familiarity with whales
Speaker 2: that even the average person has today just through being
Speaker 2: able to see them in movies and documentaries.
Speaker 1: Right, and of course, depending on when you're trying, you're
Speaker 1: looking out through the ocean and potentially seeing a whale,
Speaker 1: that the ability to see them might be greatly reduced
Speaker 1: by human whaling enterprise, which you know certainly initially greatly
Speaker 1: reduced the number of whales that would have been close
Speaker 1: to shore and then eventually got into those populations that
Speaker 1: were further from shore.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, so this chapter on the fountain, on one hand,
Speaker 2: it simply made me want to investigate the blowhole and
Speaker 2: whale respiration as a subject in itself, which we will do.
Speaker 2: But this chapter also raises a number of controversies and
Speaker 2: strange claims that I wanted to further investigate. One of
Speaker 2: the controversies that Melville opens the chapter by acknowledging is
Speaker 2: the question of what is the spout or what is
Speaker 2: it that comes out of the spout? I guess it
Speaker 2: depends on what you're using the word spout to refer
Speaker 2: to there, But yeah, what is coming out of the blowhole?
Speaker 2: Is it water or is it, as Ishmael says, quote,
Speaker 2: nothing but vapor that's a question that did seem to
Speaker 2: be a live one to some degree in Melville's day.
Speaker 2: But also as far as Strange claims go, here's one
Speaker 2: for you I want to read from later in the chapter.
Speaker 2: Are you ready, Rob?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, so he says, quote. Nor is it at all
Speaker 2: prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching the
Speaker 2: precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do
Speaker 2: for him to be peering into it and putting his
Speaker 2: face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to
Speaker 2: this fountain and fill it and bring it away. For
Speaker 2: even when coming into slight contact with the outer vapory
Speaker 2: shreds of the jet, which will often happen, your skin
Speaker 2: will feverishly smart from the acridness of the thing so
Speaker 2: touching it. And I know one who, coming into still
Speaker 2: closer contact with the spout, whether with some scientific object
Speaker 2: in view or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled
Speaker 2: off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen the
Speaker 2: spout is deemed poisonous, they try to evade it. Another
Speaker 2: thing I have heard it said, and I do not
Speaker 2: much doubt it that if the jet is fairly spouted
Speaker 2: into your eyes, it will blind you. The wise thing
Speaker 2: the investigator can do, then, it seems to me, is
Speaker 2: to let this deadly spout alone. Okay, so I read
Speaker 2: that and I was like, what is going on here?
Speaker 2: That this sounds wrong to me. But I wonder if
Speaker 2: there's some kind of basis to it, or some way
Speaker 2: this rumor could have gotten started that would be identifiable.
Speaker 2: I don't know, So that's another thing I want to explore.
Speaker 2: The allegedly deadly, poisonous blinding spout steals your power of sight,
Speaker 2: melts away your flesh like xenomorph blood.
Speaker 1: This is something else. This goes beyond discussions of water
Speaker 1: versus mist, because this is just not true. And you know,
Speaker 1: we mentioned my time with my family down in Mexico
Speaker 1: getting to observe the gray whales. So when we were
Speaker 1: out there, there would often be multiple gray whales around
Speaker 1: the boat constantly, you know, breathing close to the surface.
Speaker 1: And I should point out these were casual breaths. These
Speaker 1: were not breaths that were occurring after deep dive or
Speaker 1: anything like that, but still pretty explosive exhalations, a lot
Speaker 1: of mist floating around in the air. I definitely got
Speaker 1: whale spout on me from these mists, and I saw
Speaker 1: on more than one occasion somebody take a rather stiff
Speaker 1: blast of the whale spout directly in the face. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't recall if they had sunglasses on or what,
Speaker 1: but it was it was alarming, but it wasn't anything
Speaker 1: that caused undue grief or stress. It was one of
Speaker 1: those things you kind of laugh about afterwards you wash
Speaker 1: off your face. And some of my fellow whale watchers,
Speaker 1: they really took it as kind of a point of pride,
Speaker 1: you know, they're like, it's they referred to it as
Speaker 1: a kind of baptism. You know, you're just say you
Speaker 1: wanted to get close to these creatures. It doesn't get
Speaker 1: a lot closer than that.
Speaker 2: But what about your skin? Did it peel off or
Speaker 2: do you still have your skin on?
Speaker 1: I still have all, I mean all my skin was intact.
Speaker 1: Following each of these episodes out on the water, people
Speaker 1: who were blasted full on in the face also were fine.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, the only thing that comes to
Speaker 1: mind is, I guess it seems possible that someone could
Speaker 1: have in some sort of an allergic reaction to something
Speaker 1: in the whale spout, But I've never heard it as
Speaker 1: actually occurring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems to be based on everything I've read
Speaker 2: that You're right. I could not find any evidence that
Speaker 2: what comes out of a whales blowhole is actually poisonous
Speaker 2: or acrid to the point that it will burn your
Speaker 2: skin away. But we can still come back to this,
Speaker 2: and I don't know, maybe at least try to investigate
Speaker 2: anything we can figure out about the claim itself, despite
Speaker 2: the fact that it seems obviously not true.
Speaker 1: Right, let's get into the basic science of whale spout
Speaker 1: or whale blow. What is whale blow Well, it's discussed
Speaker 1: by Mark Carwardine in the Handbook of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises,
Speaker 1: an excellent that I referred to several times in our
Speaker 1: previous series on the gray whale. Whale blow or whale
Speaker 1: spout refers to both the whale's act of breathing explosive
Speaker 1: exhalation followed by immediate inhalation, and also it refers to
Speaker 1: the visible misty cloud that hangs in the air afterwards.
Speaker 1: Quote condensed water, a fine spray of mucus from inside
Speaker 1: the lungs, and seawater trapped in the blowholes. And I
Speaker 1: think this was one of the main reasons that I
Speaker 1: did take a little extra care to avoid staring down
Speaker 1: over the side of the boat at a blowhole because
Speaker 1: I did not want to be sneezed full on in
Speaker 1: the face by one of these leviathans. But I was
Speaker 1: not deathly afraid of it and fearful of my sight.
Speaker 2: Well, sure, and you might want to avoid that, not
Speaker 2: just because of the forcefulness of the blow but for
Speaker 2: another I mean, one of the same reasons you wouldn't
Speaker 2: want a human to sneeze in your face, which is
Speaker 2: that like when somebody sneezes that mucus might contain significant
Speaker 2: loading of bacteria, and yeah, you don't know what that's
Speaker 2: going to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, So I avoided it, but I also didn't
Speaker 1: feel bad about I certainly got plenty of the mist
Speaker 1: on me, because if you have multiple gray whales in
Speaker 1: your vicinity, you're just in a cloud of the stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's unavoidable. Yeah, so, you know, breaking it down
Speaker 1: to brass tax here the obvious whales. Of course, as
Speaker 1: we've stated aquatic mammals, they have to come to the
Speaker 1: surface to breathe, but hold their breath while underwater, and
Speaker 1: according to Hammondadol in the book Whales Their Biology and Behavior.
Speaker 1: Whales consciously control their breathing, unlike most mammals who are
Speaker 1: reflex breathers. Like us. They breathe through their blowholes, which
Speaker 1: are sometimes called their nares, which are essentially evolved nostrils
Speaker 1: which can be muscularly opened and closed. And as the
Speaker 1: authors point out quote, the air pressure in the nasal
Speaker 1: passage is higher than the ambient pressure at the surface,
Speaker 1: leading to the explosive release of air from the blowhole.
Speaker 1: The exhaled air from the whales inside is warmer than
Speaker 1: the surrounding air and carries moisture, which condenses into the
Speaker 1: visible blow that so often is the first tell tale
Speaker 1: sign of a whale. Now, as we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: show before, baileen whales have two holes, while toothed whales
Speaker 1: have only one. Baileane whales also have a raised blowhole
Speaker 1: with a frontal splash guard. It's the explosive exhalation and
Speaker 1: quick inhalation takes a mere second in the smaller whales
Speaker 1: in just a few seconds in the giant, so there's
Speaker 1: a real economy of breathing. In all of this, you
Speaker 1: come up to the surface and Contrary to a lot
Speaker 1: of the illustrations of whales, their whole head does not
Speaker 1: come up. I mean, they can do some of this,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessary for breathing. All they have to
Speaker 1: do is just get the top of their head that
Speaker 1: little blowhole above the water. To pull this off in
Speaker 1: a manner of seconds. And according to the National Marine
Speaker 1: Life Center, just one exhalation pretty much empties a whale's
Speaker 1: entire lungs. One of our exhalations only empties part of
Speaker 1: our lungs.
Speaker 2: Now, this is an interesting fact that I thought was
Speaker 2: worth looking at a little bit deeper, this thing about
Speaker 2: whale lungs and capacity and the extent to which that
Speaker 2: capacity is used. So I started thinking about the comparison
Speaker 2: to underwater breath holding in humans. Most people who have
Speaker 2: no special training can comfortably hold their breath underwater for
Speaker 2: about a minute. I've seen estimates ranging from like one
Speaker 2: to two minutes to thirty to ninety seconds. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that depends on how old the population you're
Speaker 2: looking at is, or you know, how physically fit they are,
Speaker 2: but still, you know, the average person is not going
Speaker 2: to be able to stay under that long. Maybe a
Speaker 2: couple of minutes. Now with conditioning, humans can stay under
Speaker 2: water a lot longer. I was actually I was trying
Speaker 2: to find the current human record for underwater breath holding,
Speaker 2: and according to Guinness World Records, the record holder is
Speaker 2: a Croatian man named Budimir Shobot, who on March twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, stayed underwater for twenty four minutes and
Speaker 2: thirty seven seconds. And at first I was like, wait
Speaker 2: a second, that just cannot be correct. That is too long.
Speaker 2: That is more than two full playthroughs of the album
Speaker 2: length version, not the single version of I'd Do Anything
Speaker 2: for Love, but I won't do that. Can't imagine it.
Speaker 2: And to some degree my instincts were confirmed because I
Speaker 2: realized there's a big caveat here. Showbots record and many
Speaker 2: other people who compete for this particular record. This was
Speaker 2: for a special category of breath holding oxygen assisted voluntary
Speaker 2: breath holding. So in this category, before you go under
Speaker 2: the water, you can spend up to thirty minutes ventilating
Speaker 2: with one hundred percent pure oxygen from a tank. So
Speaker 2: this is a pre dive hyperventilation process to like superoxygenate
Speaker 2: your body. Of course, one hundred percent pure oxygen's much
Speaker 2: higher than the the content in the air. We normally
Speaker 2: breathe at twenty one percent oxygen. So yeah, the people
Speaker 2: who do this, they are super oxygenating their body before
Speaker 2: they start. And also, of course this guy was highly trained.
Speaker 2: He spent more than three years training six days a week.
Speaker 2: So twenty four and a half minutes is the record
Speaker 2: for this technology assisted hyper ventilation category. But I was
Speaker 2: trying to find the not technology assisted version, and I
Speaker 2: found a twenty twenty three article by a University of
Speaker 2: Windsor kinesiologist named Anthony Bain, and he writes that the
Speaker 2: record for breath holding if you don't pregame with pure oxygen,
Speaker 2: is less than half that It is possibly eleven minutes
Speaker 2: and thirty five seconds for men, which is a record
Speaker 2: held by Stefan Mifsud. Though there's some dispute about this
Speaker 2: one because there's also a guy named Bronco Petrovitch who
Speaker 2: holds a record accredited by Guinness, but not by this
Speaker 2: other organization, a governing body called the International Association for
Speaker 2: the Development of Apnea, which aparently does some kind of
Speaker 2: certification of these records. And I don't want to get
Speaker 2: drawn into a knife fight about which record is legitimate.
Speaker 2: But let's just say the unassisted record for men is
Speaker 2: somewhere between the eleven to twelve minute range, and the
Speaker 2: record for women is nine minutes and two seconds, held
Speaker 2: by Natalia Mulkanova.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't want to make any enemies of people
Speaker 1: who can hold their breath this long.
Speaker 2: That does sound dangerous. Just as a side note, speaking
Speaker 2: of people who can hold their breath a shockingly long time.
Speaker 2: This article also mentioned something I hadn't heard of at all,
Speaker 2: Apparently in preparation for the filming of Avatar Too, The
Speaker 2: Way of Water. The actress Kate Winslet trained in underwater
Speaker 2: breath holding for several weeks, and on set she was
Speaker 2: able to stay underwater for more than seven minutes, something
Speaker 2: that I am sure, no matter how much I trained,
Speaker 2: I could not do. She did this on camera too,
Speaker 2: and you can watch a video of it. When she
Speaker 2: pops up at the end, she asks, am I dead?
Speaker 2: So hat's off to Kate?
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: By the way, did you see Way of Water? I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it yet. I did.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My family and I just doing the holidays. It
Speaker 1: was super cold. One morning we got up and saw
Speaker 1: a morning showing of Avatar two, complete with coffee and
Speaker 1: multiple bathroom breaks because it's super long. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: fun and it's got space whales in it, so that's
Speaker 1: kind of neat.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: There are some whales that can stay underwater without breathing
Speaker 2: longer than we can go in a movie without a
Speaker 2: bathroom break, at least when there's coffee involved. Yes, But
Speaker 2: while that is individual records, there are also there are
Speaker 2: whole cultures of people who regularly do extended underwater free
Speaker 2: diving and standard for a long period of time. I
Speaker 2: was looking at one study quickly just to mention by
Speaker 2: Ilardo at All published in the journal Cell in twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen called Physiological and Genetic adaptations to Diving in see Nomads,
Speaker 2: and this study was examining adaptations in the Sama people
Speaker 2: also known as the Bajoo, a nomadic sea living people
Speaker 2: of Southeast Asia who are well known for their amazing
Speaker 2: free diving skills. In some cases they spend several hours
Speaker 2: a day underwater, not continuously, but they will stay under
Speaker 2: continuously for minutes at a time while free diving to
Speaker 2: retrieve things from below, and this is part of been
Speaker 2: part of their culture for thousands of years. And so
Speaker 2: this study did some genomic and anatomical analysis of these
Speaker 2: people to see, well, you know, the free diving skill
Speaker 2: is common in their culture, do they typically have any
Speaker 2: differences that assist in that And the study did find, quote,
Speaker 2: using a comparative genomic study, we showed that natural selection
Speaker 2: on genetic variants in the PDE one zero a gene
Speaker 2: have increased spleen size in the bajow, providing them with
Speaker 2: a larger reservo are of oxygenated red blood cells. We
Speaker 2: also find evidence of strong selections specific to the bajau
Speaker 2: on bdk RB two a gene affecting the human diving reflex.
Speaker 2: And so they say that people living in this culture
Speaker 2: have developed specific adaptations for hypoxia tolerance, for being better
Speaker 2: at going longer with holding the breath underwater. But anyway,
Speaker 2: to come back to this sort of untrained natural human
Speaker 2: range of people who don't practice diving commonly, you know,
Speaker 2: it's maybe like one to two minutes on average, more
Speaker 2: like nine to twelve minutes at the extreme. Some whale species,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, have, in extreme cases, as we said,
Speaker 2: been observed to stay under the surface for hours. And
Speaker 2: while that might not be normal. It's normal for whales
Speaker 2: to stand or for longer than the unassisted record for humans.
Speaker 2: It's commonly cited that sperm whales can stay under for
Speaker 2: ninety minutes while hunting. So the question is how do
Speaker 2: they do this? You might naturally assume the answer is
Speaker 2: that the whales have bigger lungs. They can take a
Speaker 2: deeper breath hold in more air because they've got bigger lungs.
Speaker 2: But actually that's not the case. The strange thing is,
Speaker 2: relative to body size, whales have significantly smaller lungs than humans.
Speaker 2: Human lungs are roughly seven percent of body size on average,
Speaker 2: but whale lungs can be less than half that, at
Speaker 2: about three percent of body size.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating, that's a great point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so how does that work the standard for like
Speaker 2: movie length times while having lungs that are relatively smaller
Speaker 2: than ours. So I was reading about this in a
Speaker 2: book called The Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals edited by burned
Speaker 2: In Puran from Academic Press two thousand and nine, and
Speaker 2: there was a chapter on breathing in marine mammals by
Speaker 2: the marine biologist Douglas Wartsock. And here's where we come
Speaker 2: back to what you said right about the relative difference
Speaker 2: in how much the lung can empty. This concerns a
Speaker 2: biological metric known as the tidal volume. Tidal volume is
Speaker 2: the amount of air that is inhaled and exhaled during
Speaker 2: normal respiration. It turns out most animals do not completely
Speaker 2: empty and refill their lungs with each breath. Instead, they're
Speaker 2: always exchanging some fractional percentage of the gas in their
Speaker 2: lungs for fresh air from the outside. What percentage of
Speaker 2: the total lung capacity is exchanged with each breath varies
Speaker 2: by species, and I guess probably also would vary with
Speaker 2: individual animals too, but there are certainly species differences and
Speaker 2: there are trends with groups of animals. According to Wartsock,
Speaker 2: the tidal volume is a bigger percentage of the animal's
Speaker 2: total lung capacity when you're looking at marine mammals than
Speaker 2: when you're looking at terrestrial mammals. So you look at
Speaker 2: an average terrestrial mammal, horses, humans, whatever tidal volume is
Speaker 2: going to be something like ten to fifteen percent of
Speaker 2: total lung capacity. Meanwhile, for marine mammals, and this would
Speaker 2: include not just whales but other marine mammals, pinnip heads
Speaker 2: and so forth. Average tidal volume is much higher, usually
Speaker 2: more than seventy five percent of total lung capacity, so
Speaker 2: many multiples beyond the depth of gas exchange that we
Speaker 2: accomplish when we breathe. For sea mammals like whales, breathing
Speaker 2: in and out is just a more dramatic activity. They're
Speaker 2: emptying and refilling to a near total extent. And that's
Speaker 2: just for normal respiration. For what works out calls vital capacity.
Speaker 2: Essentially the maximum title volume you're capable of when you're
Speaker 2: like really breathing in and out as deeply as you can.
Speaker 2: That rarely exceeds seventy five percent of lung capacity in
Speaker 2: land based mammals, but marine mammals can go higher than
Speaker 2: ninety percent. So even though again whales might have smaller
Speaker 2: lungs relative to body size, they can like almost totally
Speaker 2: collapse that lung to exhale and then reinflate the lung
Speaker 2: totally is like huge exchange of gas. And the question
Speaker 2: would be what makes that difference. Why would marine mammals
Speaker 2: have the ability to sort of crush out their lungs
Speaker 2: like that, Well, we can't really do the same thing.
Speaker 2: Wartzok says, quote, Marine mammal lungs contain more elastic tissue
Speaker 2: than those of terrestrial mammals. The ribs contain more cartilage
Speaker 2: and are thus more compliant than those of terrestrial mammals.
Speaker 2: The lung is also more compliant. Marine mammal lungs can
Speaker 2: collapse and reinflate repeatedly, whereas in terrestrial mammals, lung collapses
Speaker 2: a serious situation that requires intervention to reinflate. Although both
Speaker 2: terrestrial mammals and marine mammals inspire actively and expire passively,
Speaker 2: so there's active working of a muscle to breathe in
Speaker 2: and then relaxing of the muscle to breathe out. Quote.
Speaker 2: The features noted earlier allow much greater elastic recoil of
Speaker 2: the lungs, chest, cavity, and diaphragm, and thus a greater
Speaker 2: tidal volume in proportion to total lung capacity. So he's
Speaker 2: almost painting a picture of whale lungs as this kind
Speaker 2: of I don't know, like like super elastic balloon or
Speaker 2: is something that just kind of like springs back and forth.
Speaker 2: And I know this isn't biologically accurate, but to my mind,
Speaker 2: I was thinking about with this, like, you know, naturally
Speaker 2: collapsing lung that's just part of the breathing process. It's
Speaker 2: almost in my brain like a whoope cushion being sat
Speaker 2: on every time the whale breathes out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean all of this. I think it brings
Speaker 1: up something that is at once obvious about the whale
Speaker 1: and also you know, a lot more sublime in many
Speaker 1: ways as well. And that is, of course, is that
Speaker 1: when you look back at what whales may have looked like,
Speaker 1: what their bodies may have been like when they were
Speaker 1: land based organisms, or their their ancestors were, and you
Speaker 1: look at their forms now, it's like they have changed
Speaker 1: so much, they have evolved so much to become these
Speaker 1: masters of the ocean, and there are all these various
Speaker 1: features like this where it's just it's just absolutely alarming
Speaker 1: when you look closer, even though I mean very obviously
Speaker 1: this is the nature of the whale, when you just
Speaker 1: look at even just a basic sketch of their anatomy.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, I mean this once eons ago quadrupedal mammal
Speaker 2: that lived an ever increasing amount of its life in
Speaker 2: the water and eventually became a fully marine organism and
Speaker 2: now one of its adaptations is that its lungs almost
Speaker 2: completely collapse when it breathes out and create this forceful
Speaker 2: burst of exhalation that is, in the end what we
Speaker 2: see when the whale, when the whale spouts, or when
Speaker 2: the blowhole opens, and it can be incredibly powerful when
Speaker 2: the lung collapses. Wartsock writes, quote in gray whale calves,
Speaker 2: the duration of expiration and inhalation is closer to half
Speaker 2: a second, but the tidal volume can be as great
Speaker 2: as sixty two liters and the maximum flow rate is
Speaker 2: as great as two hundred and two leaders per second.
Speaker 2: Gas flows through the external nares at speeds of forty
Speaker 2: four meters per second during inspiration and two hundred meters
Speaker 2: per second during expiration, and that also he emphasizes how
Speaker 2: efficient the breathing process is, saying that like the breathing
Speaker 2: out usually begins before the whale actually even breaks the
Speaker 2: surface of the water, so it's like they're coming up
Speaker 2: to break the surface, and then before they reach the surface,
Speaker 2: the exhale starts, so it blasts, and then that might
Speaker 2: create some of the water. You actually see another part
Speaker 2: of what appears to be water coming out of the
Speaker 2: blowhole is the condensing of the vapor from the lung,
Speaker 2: but then it's over the surface for just a little
Speaker 2: bit of time. It uses that time while it's out
Speaker 2: to breathe in suddenly and then it goes back under.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In my experiences out there with the gray whales too,
Speaker 1: the Yeah, it's depending on when they're releasing their exhalation.
Speaker 1: If they're releasing it when the blowhole is above or
Speaker 1: mostly above the surface of the water, that creates one
Speaker 1: type of spout. But if they release it underneath the
Speaker 1: water by even say, you know, a few inches or more,
Speaker 1: you're going to have even more water coming up. It's
Speaker 1: going to be even more of a of a of
Speaker 1: what feels like a fountain to the face or to
Speaker 1: the side of the boat.
Speaker 2: Now, one last thing I wanted to mention about why
Speaker 2: whales can stay under so long. Actually first came across
Speaker 2: this and just an interesting informational video by a marine
Speaker 2: ecologist to the University of New South Whales named Professor
Speaker 2: Tracy Rogers, and this was pointing out, in addition to
Speaker 2: stuff about the lungs, the capacity of cetaceans to just
Speaker 2: store more oxygen in their body tissues, so beyond what
Speaker 2: gas the lungs are capable of holding the storage of
Speaker 2: oxygen in the hemoglobin in red blood cells. You know,
Speaker 2: both humans and whales. Marine mammals and terrestrial mammals store
Speaker 2: oxygen in the hemoglobin, but whales have much more hemoglobin
Speaker 2: in their blood, which is one reason that their blood
Speaker 2: might appear darker red than the blood of terrestrial mammals.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever seen whale blood, but
Speaker 2: I feel like I have noticed this before that it
Speaker 2: comes out so dark red it almost looks kind of
Speaker 2: like black or purple.
Speaker 1: I suppose I've seen it in documentaries. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But also whales simply have more blood relative to
Speaker 2: their body size than than terrestrial mammals generally do, and
Speaker 2: they have more myoglobin in their muscles to store oxygen,
Speaker 2: as well as other adaptations that just have to do
Speaker 2: with how the body of the whale uses oxygen once
Speaker 2: it is submerged, So it has adaptations that can say,
Speaker 2: turn off delivery of oxygen to certain body systems that
Speaker 2: are not necessarily being used at the moment while the
Speaker 2: whale is deeply submerged. So if it's you know, a
Speaker 2: deep underwater hunting and it's not going to come up
Speaker 2: for a while. It might sort of reduce oxygen usage
Speaker 2: of its digestive system or something like that.
Speaker 1: Now, we've discussed how the ancestors of whales had frontal
Speaker 1: nostrils at the ends of their snouts before on the show,
Speaker 1: and how the nostrils travel up to the top of
Speaker 1: the head over the course of their evolution, you know,
Speaker 1: becoming the blowhole. We can see evidence of this journey
Speaker 1: and fossil remains, and we can also see this movement
Speaker 1: in their fetal development. We can watch the blowhole move
Speaker 1: up the face and head. I believe we mostly discuss
Speaker 1: the energy efficiency of a snout breather having to bring
Speaker 1: the whole head up as opposed to the top of
Speaker 1: the head, and Hammond dett All also point out that
Speaker 1: this positioning definitely shades down the breathing time over the
Speaker 1: course of evolution. So all they have to do, they
Speaker 1: don't have to bring the snout up to breathe. All
Speaker 1: they have to do is just get the blowhole itself
Speaker 1: above the surface of the water. And like we've been
Speaker 1: saying in so many changes, I mean, the whale is
Speaker 1: a creature that has just been completely transformed by its
Speaker 1: journey into and its mastery of the ocean over the
Speaker 1: course of its evolution, and you can there's so many
Speaker 1: examples of this, but one that came up is this
Speaker 1: that they have no facial sinuses, presumably to avoid complications
Speaker 1: with diving. Anyone out there if you're a diver, and
Speaker 1: you may know some of the complications that can occur
Speaker 1: if you say clogged your sinuses are clogged up or
Speaker 1: something like that. Even if you're flying, you can sometimes
Speaker 1: encounter problems with this, and so this is a this
Speaker 1: is just one problem that the whale has eliminated through
Speaker 1: its evolution. Now, coming back to the visible spout of
Speaker 1: the whale, the blow of the whale, as one would
Speaker 1: see from a distance that ar she blows. It's it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that it's this is something that Mark Carbadine
Speaker 1: discusses in the Hambook of Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises. The
Speaker 1: blow or the spout of a whale is very distinctive
Speaker 1: with larger whales, and it can be categorized by height, shape,
Speaker 1: and visibility. And that's not to say it's easy to do.
Speaker 1: There's an art to it. An experienced whale watcher has
Speaker 1: to take into account various factors such as wind, rain,
Speaker 1: air temperature, light quality, which can all of these can
Speaker 1: you know, distort the shape of the spout or the
Speaker 1: degree to which the spout is visible. And also we
Speaker 1: have to take into account that the first spout after
Speaker 1: a long dive tends to be far stronger, which I
Speaker 1: think we can we can sort of relate to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of our experience of breathing after
Speaker 1: holding one's breath for a period of time. Also, individual
Speaker 1: whale size is going to play a role in all
Speaker 1: of this, and also behavior of an individual whale will
Speaker 1: also be a factor. Still, if you know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: you can make out the species of a great whale,
Speaker 1: especially at a distance. To give a few basic examples
Speaker 1: of note here and Joe, I sent you some snapshot
Speaker 1: of some of the illustrations from Carlodiane's book to look
Speaker 1: at in your email there. But the gray whale, which
Speaker 1: we discussed in previous episodes, is known for its heart
Speaker 1: shaped plume up to five meters. The sperm whale is
Speaker 1: also known for its spout. It has a single blowhole
Speaker 1: spout off to the side up to six meters. The
Speaker 1: blue whale spout is a single vertical plume of up
Speaker 1: to twelve meters. Then the North Atlantic right whale is
Speaker 1: interesting like other right whales, it has two spouts, one
Speaker 1: off to either side up to seven meters. And then
Speaker 1: with the orca, which of course discussed at length in
Speaker 1: our gray whale series, up to five meters, bushy at
Speaker 1: the top and projected slightly forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these illustrations are lovely and they do almost kind
Speaker 2: of look like silhouettes of different tree species that you
Speaker 2: would identify like that, you know, oh, that's the maple
Speaker 2: and that's the.
Speaker 1: Spruce, right right. So any any book you have, particular
Speaker 1: and in particular the Handbook of Whales, Dolphins and porposes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has pages of these where you can compare them.
Speaker 1: But then also each species profiled in the book there
Speaker 1: is they have this image of what it's spout would
Speaker 1: basically look like. Again, you'd have to take into account
Speaker 1: some of these factors though. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and close out this episode. Well,
Speaker 1: but we'll be back for a part two on all
Speaker 1: of this. I believe this will be a two parter,
Speaker 1: so come back on Thursday. We have more to discuss
Speaker 1: more on this whole idea that the that the Herman
Speaker 1: Melville's talking about, that a whale spout is going to
Speaker 1: burn your skin off, poison you, and blind you. Will
Speaker 1: see what some contemporary critics we're saying about all of that,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into some other areas surrounding whale spout.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to check out
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, including checking
Speaker 1: out that multi part series we did on the Gray
Speaker 1: Whale and it's travels its relationship with the Orcas, you
Speaker 1: can find that in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some Mondays
Speaker 1: we do a listener mail, on Wednesdays we do a
Speaker 1: short form artifact or monster fact, and on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.