Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind, we are going to begin a couple
Speaker 3: of episodes on the subject of blubber. I am surprisingly
Speaker 3: fired up about blubber. I don't know exactly why, but
Speaker 3: I'm like acheing to talk about it.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: I think a big part of it is that, if
Speaker 2: nothing else, blubber is just a funny word. It's just
Speaker 2: a funny sounding word. I had to look into it
Speaker 2: a little bit before we proceeded here, apparently stemming from
Speaker 2: the late fourteenth century blobber, which describes bubbles, bubbling, or foaming,
Speaker 2: often pointed out like the Middle English for foam, and
Speaker 2: this also influences the verb blubber, as in two blubber.
Speaker 2: So yeah, at the very least, blubber is just a
Speaker 2: funny word to think about and say.
Speaker 3: Does the word blob come from the same root as blubber?
Speaker 2: I believe it does.
Speaker 3: Wow, So it might not surprise you if you know
Speaker 3: anything about marine mammal anatomy. To hear that, I started
Speaker 3: thinking about Blubber to cover on the show because we've
Speaker 3: come into the winter months here in the Southeastern United
Speaker 3: States and I have felt that desire again to wrap
Speaker 3: myself in coziness, to find barriers against the cold. And
Speaker 3: this of course got me thinking about Blubber, which turned
Speaker 3: my mind once again to one of my favorite weird
Speaker 3: novels to quote and explore on stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 3: That is Herman Melville's Moby Dick. We've talked about passages
Speaker 3: from Moby Dick on the show before, often related to
Speaker 3: whale anatomy, but sometimes on other strange subjects. I know
Speaker 3: we did a bunch of stuff about Moby Dick when
Speaker 3: I did an episode with Lauren and Annie of of
Speaker 3: the podcast Savor on Ambergris or Ambergrise uh, and we
Speaker 3: talked about Moby Dick when Rob, when you and I
Speaker 3: did some episodes on whale spout on like what exactly
Speaker 3: is going on there when you see that you know,
Speaker 3: the whale blast, what's coming out? And does it burn
Speaker 3: the skin? Does it poison people? As alleged and Moby Dick.
Speaker 2: I like that you have singled it out as a
Speaker 2: weird novel.
Speaker 3: Oh, it totally is weird.
Speaker 2: I think it is easy. It's given its its notoriety,
Speaker 2: and you know, everyone has heard of Moby Dick, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people have. If you haven't read it,
Speaker 2: you've at least seen a film adaptation of it, hopefully
Speaker 2: one of the good ones. You might miss the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is very weird in many regards.
Speaker 3: You know, it's incredibly weird and what i'd say, one
Speaker 3: of the weirdest books that people read in school probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: We also talked about it briefly in Wrath of Khan,
Speaker 2: our Weird House cinema episode, because of course it too
Speaker 2: takes a hefty shot of Moby Dick.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right, but of course relating to blubber specifically,
Speaker 3: in chapter sixty eight of Moby Dick, the narrator Ishmael
Speaker 3: meditates on the concept of whale skin and whale blubber,
Speaker 3: which he calls the blanket. Now, as we've talked about before,
Speaker 3: the whale facts and Moby Dick are of varying accuracy
Speaker 3: when reconciled against modern science. Sometimes they're pretty spot on,
Speaker 3: other times they're way off. Some of the main observations
Speaker 3: in this chapter, as we'll discuss are correct, mainly in
Speaker 3: that Ishmael observes that the whale's body is surrounded by
Speaker 3: a thick layer of blubber, and that one of the
Speaker 3: blubber's main purposes is related to insulation the retention of
Speaker 3: body heat. That's not the only thing that blubber does
Speaker 3: in marine mammals, but that's a big part of it.
Speaker 3: It's one of the most important things it does. So
Speaker 3: first he marvels at the incredible size and quantity of
Speaker 3: blubber within the whale, which, in the example of a
Speaker 3: single sperm whale that he's talking about, boils down into
Speaker 3: one hundred barrels of oil. He says, one hundred bear
Speaker 3: of oil from a single whale, and that's not even
Speaker 3: the entire mass of its outer skin or integument layer.
Speaker 3: And he says that that gives the mind a hint
Speaker 3: of the quote enormousness of that animated mass overall. And
Speaker 3: he also observes the texture and the makeup of the blubber,
Speaker 3: which is quote something of the consistence of firm, close
Speaker 3: grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges
Speaker 3: from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.
Speaker 3: He also remarks curiously when he's looking at the outer
Speaker 3: skin of the sperm whale. He says that the sperm
Speaker 3: whale's skin is quote all over, obliquely crossed and recrossed,
Speaker 3: with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those
Speaker 3: in the finest Italian line engravings, which he later also
Speaker 3: compares to Egyptian hieroglyphics. He especially makes the connection to
Speaker 3: the mysteriousness of the hieroglyphics and the mysteriousness of the
Speaker 3: marks the whale's body. I think we now know that
Speaker 3: this is actually a common thing you do see on
Speaker 3: the bodies of sperm whales, that they will have lines
Speaker 3: or sometimes even circular scars over their bodies, which can
Speaker 3: in part come from battles with the squid they hunt,
Speaker 3: can come from running into things, butting, fights with other whales,
Speaker 3: all kinds of scrapings and accidents, maybe sat yes, mating,
Speaker 3: maybe other contact with fishing equipment or whatever. The whales
Speaker 3: can get a lot of scars. And I love thinking
Speaker 3: of these scars on the outside of the sperm whale
Speaker 3: skin as like a mysterious language to be deciphered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3: But then Finally he comes to marvel at the blubber
Speaker 3: as a heat retaining adaptation within the whale, which he
Speaker 3: kind of connects two thoughts about human character. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to read a more extended passage here. Ishmael says, quote,
Speaker 3: it is by reason of this cozy blanketing of his
Speaker 3: body that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable
Speaker 3: in all weathers, in all seas, times and tides. What
Speaker 3: would become of a greenland whale, say, in those shuddering
Speaker 3: icy seas of the north, if unsupplied with his cozy surtout.
Speaker 3: Surtout is a type of coat from the time. By
Speaker 3: the way, so his cozy surtout true. Other fish are
Speaker 3: found exceedingly brisk in those hyperborean waters. But these, be
Speaker 3: it observed, are your cold blooded, lungless fish, whose very
Speaker 3: bellies are refrigerators, creatures that warm themselves under the lee
Speaker 3: of an iceberg, as a traveler in winter would bask
Speaker 3: before an infire, whereas like man, the whale has lungs
Speaker 3: and warm blood freeze his blood and he dies. How
Speaker 3: wonderful it is, then, except after explanation, that this great monster,
Speaker 3: to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is
Speaker 3: to man. How wonderful that he should be found at home,
Speaker 3: immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters.
Speaker 3: And then a little later he says, it does seemed
Speaker 3: to me that herein we see the rare virtue of
Speaker 3: a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls,
Speaker 3: and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh man, admire
Speaker 3: and model thyself after the whale. Do thou too remain
Speaker 3: warm among ice? Do thou too live in this world
Speaker 3: without being of it? Be cool at the equator, Keep
Speaker 3: thy blood fluid at the pole, like the great dome
Speaker 3: of Saint Peter's, and like the great whale. Retain o man,
Speaker 3: in all seasons a temperature of thine own beautiful.
Speaker 2: I love it. I especially want to get back to
Speaker 2: that immerse to his lips for life in those Arctic waters.
Speaker 3: Later on in this episode, now I mentioned that this
Speaker 3: chapter I was just quoting from is called The Blanket
Speaker 3: Chapter sixty eight. The blanket. The blanket referring to the
Speaker 3: coating of blubber around the whale's body. There is actually
Speaker 3: a much earlier part of the story which struck me
Speaker 3: as abstractly and yet powerfully can to this chapter, and
Speaker 3: this earlier part is not about whale anatomy at all,
Speaker 3: but about a literal blanket. And it seems also related
Speaker 3: somehow to the seasonal mind state I've been in that
Speaker 3: got me thinking about blubber. So this is chapter eleven,
Speaker 3: much earlier. It's called night Gown, and the context in
Speaker 3: the story is that because of overcrowding at a boarding
Speaker 3: house on Nantucket, Ishmael he's just arrived there and he
Speaker 3: has been forced to share a room, and not to
Speaker 3: share a room, to share a bed at the boarding
Speaker 3: house with the Polynesian harpooneer quek Weeg. And he's initially
Speaker 3: much annoyed by these circumstances, but then after some reflection
Speaker 3: and some experiences together, Ishmael comes to not just tolerate,
Speaker 3: but admire and even adore quek Weeg, and they become
Speaker 3: best of friends, in Ishmael's words, a cozy, loving pair
Speaker 3: on their honeymoon. So in the Nightgown chapter, Ishmael writes
Speaker 3: of sharing a bed in a blanket at the boarding
Speaker 3: house with quik Weeg. He says, first they try to sleep,
Speaker 3: then they're not able to sleep. And then finally, he says, quote,
Speaker 3: we became very wakeful, so much so that our recumbent
Speaker 3: position began to grow wearisome. And by little and little
Speaker 3: we found ourselves sitting up, the clothes well tucked around us,
Speaker 3: leaning against the headboard, with our fore knees drawn up
Speaker 3: close together, and our two noses bending over them, as
Speaker 3: if our knee pans were warming pans. We felt very
Speaker 3: nice and snug, the more so since it was so
Speaker 3: chilly out of doors, indeed out of bedclothes too, seeing
Speaker 3: that there was no fire in the room. The more so,
Speaker 3: I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small
Speaker 3: part of you must be cold. For there is no
Speaker 3: quality in this world that is not what it is merely.
Speaker 3: By contrast, nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself
Speaker 3: that you are all over comfortable, and you have been
Speaker 3: so a long time, then you cannot be said to
Speaker 3: be comfortable anymore. But if, like Queequeg and me in
Speaker 3: the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown
Speaker 3: of your head slightly chilled, why then indeed, in the
Speaker 3: general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For
Speaker 3: this reason, a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with
Speaker 3: a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of
Speaker 3: the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness
Speaker 3: is to have nothing but the blanket between you and
Speaker 3: your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then
Speaker 3: there you lie, like the one warm spark in the
Speaker 3: heart of an arctic crystal.
Speaker 2: Beautiful? Beautiful. Do you think that the two characters were
Speaker 2: talking about any of this as they said in bed? Oh?
Speaker 3: Maybe, I don't know. I don't remember at this point
Speaker 3: in the story how extensively the two characters are communicating
Speaker 3: across it. I don't remember what to what extent. There's
Speaker 3: a language barrier at the beginning of their friendship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could have been said, if I could have
Speaker 2: just said, Hey, isn't this delicious? I'm glad we don't
Speaker 2: have a fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But no, I think there really is something to
Speaker 3: that that there is a way that it is much
Speaker 3: cozier to be warm under a blanket in a cold
Speaker 3: room then to be under a blanket in a warm room.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a way that's almost obvious.
Speaker 2: But yeah, No, I'm a big blanket fan. If it's
Speaker 2: too hot, I'm a little bit sad that I don't
Speaker 2: get to cover up with blankets more. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: when it's too cold, I'm just sad in general. So
Speaker 2: the one warm stark, Yeah, I know what he's getting
Speaker 2: at here.
Speaker 3: But I thought that this was beautiful and insightful, and
Speaker 3: to some extent it makes me think also of the
Speaker 3: anatomy of the whale, thinking of the whale's body as
Speaker 3: a blanket, the idea of creatures that carry their blanket
Speaker 3: with them into the icy waters. And if you apply
Speaker 3: the same reasoning, you know, as we'll discuss in the
Speaker 3: anatomy of the whale, the whale is not coated in
Speaker 3: every single part of its body by the blubber. So
Speaker 3: I wonder what the sensation of the whale is. You know,
Speaker 3: it has blubber mostly all around its body, but maybe
Speaker 3: not fully in the flippers or something. So does it
Speaker 3: have those little exposures to the iciness around it? What
Speaker 3: does it feel like to the whale? Does the whale
Speaker 3: have that sensation in the cold it feels with the
Speaker 3: flippers or some little parts of its body of the
Speaker 3: one warm spark in the heart of an Arctic crystal,
Speaker 3: except it doesn't have to wrap itself in the blanket.
Speaker 3: The blanket is under its skin.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. Yeah, I mean, another thing about
Speaker 2: blubbers we'll discuss is that blubber is not uniform thickness
Speaker 2: over the entire body of the whale. It's going to
Speaker 2: vary in thickness depending on where you're looking at. So
Speaker 2: I know it's a human thing, I guess, But anytime
Speaker 2: I see a creature that has evolved to thrive in
Speaker 2: the cold corners of the world, it doesn't depend on
Speaker 2: its technology to do so. Like humans, I always just
Speaker 2: kind of, on some like non thinking level, assume that
Speaker 2: they're just really called and miserable all the time. But
Speaker 2: of course that would be it'd be that's rather unreasonable
Speaker 2: with me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder if that's the equivalent of a tropical
Speaker 3: lizard looking at us, being at you know, seventy two
Speaker 3: degrees in the shade, and thinking we must be miserable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, and the rest of the series, we're going
Speaker 3: to be exploring blubber as biology and also some things
Speaker 3: about blubber in hue and culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most of that will probably be in the second episode. Yes,
Speaker 2: this episode will be more about what blubber is and
Speaker 2: what it is to a specific whale species.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what it is and what it is not.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So the best source I found rob in providing a
Speaker 3: scientific overview of blubber is actually an extensive, in depth
Speaker 3: entry in the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals from two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine from Academic Press. This article is by a
Speaker 3: well known marine biologist named Sarah J. Iverson, who is
Speaker 3: affiliated with Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. So I thought
Speaker 3: maybe we could start off by going through this entry
Speaker 3: talking about some of the points that Iverson raises and
Speaker 3: branch out for discussion at various places as we go along.
Speaker 3: All right, so what is blubber. Blubber is fat, yes,
Speaker 3: but it is not just fat. It is not just
Speaker 3: like the adapose tissue of other mammals in the world.
Speaker 3: Blubber is, in Iverson's words, a quote dense, vasculared layer
Speaker 3: of fat beneath the skin. So it is a special
Speaker 3: type of fat tissue that is a characteristic trait of
Speaker 3: marine mammals. It is found only in the mammals of
Speaker 3: the sea. There are not really fully land dwelling animals
Speaker 3: that have blubber, so all cetaceans meaning whales, porpoises and dolphins,
Speaker 3: all cyrenians like manatees and dugongs, and all pinnipeds meaning
Speaker 3: seals have blubber. Iverson notes a couple of exceptions of
Speaker 3: marine or semimarine mammals. Things you might think of as
Speaker 3: marine mammals or semimarine mammals that don't have blubber. Polar
Speaker 3: bears and sea otters don't have blubber strictly defined, though
Speaker 3: obviously they do have and rely on fat. Polar bears
Speaker 3: tend to store a lot of subcutaneous fat, which is
Speaker 3: used to insulate the body, but it doesn't have the
Speaker 3: special structural and chemical features found in blubber. It's more
Speaker 3: like regular terrestrial carnivore fat, but they do keep a
Speaker 3: lot of on their body when they can to help
Speaker 3: stay warm. Blubber is an incredibly important adaptation for marine mammals.
Speaker 3: It makes marine mammal life possible, and in some species,
Speaker 3: at particular stages of life or times of the year,
Speaker 3: blubber can make up fifty percent of the animal's total
Speaker 3: body mass. So you know some whales you meet are
Speaker 3: half blubber. In part, blubber serves the same purpose as
Speaker 3: fat in other organisms, so it stores food food energy
Speaker 3: that can later be burned to support the body's energy
Speaker 3: needs when food is scarce. But it also does other
Speaker 3: important things for marine mammals. Most importantly, probably blubber is insulation.
Speaker 3: It protects marine mammals body heat against the often extreme
Speaker 3: cold of their watery environments, and it does so in
Speaker 3: particular interesting and dynamic ways. We'll talk about that more
Speaker 3: as we go on, but blubber also aids in buoyancy
Speaker 3: and has interesting functions in help with locomotion, maybe in
Speaker 3: some cases streamlining the body in the water, in other
Speaker 3: cases even serving as a kind of spring. We can
Speaker 3: talk more about that later. And also you can learn
Speaker 3: a lot about a marine mammal by looking at its blubber.
Speaker 3: At the species level, you can learn about its evolutionary
Speaker 3: history and environmental specialization, and at the individual level, you
Speaker 3: can learn a lot of things about like what this
Speaker 3: animal has been eating and where it's been foraging by
Speaker 3: looking at its blubber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and another factor that I think we already kind
Speaker 2: of alluded to in terms of like the scarring on
Speaker 2: a whale is that blubber does provide some level of protection,
Speaker 2: some level of armor, which can can seem a little
Speaker 2: counterintuitive at first, because we think of an animal's armor,
Speaker 2: we think of hard armor. We think of hard, unfeeling
Speaker 2: protection between the organism and its many threats, And obviously
Speaker 2: blubber is not quite a hard shell. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, it can sustain a fair amount of damage
Speaker 2: from an animal's environment, so it does have to a
Speaker 2: limited degree some sort of an armor role here as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and even in non marine mammals, there are cases
Speaker 3: where fat plays an important role in protective cushioning, you
Speaker 3: might say, even if it's not like, you know, not
Speaker 3: like plate armor, but it does play a protective role
Speaker 3: in some types of cushioning basically patting. So getting into
Speaker 3: the structure of blubber. Blubber is subcutaneous fat, meaning that
Speaker 3: it's stored around the outside of the body, just under
Speaker 3: the skin. And this is in contrast to visceral fat,
Speaker 3: which is stored deeper in the body cavity surrounding the organs.
Speaker 3: Blubber sits just under the skin, kind of loosely enveloping
Speaker 3: the underlying layer of muscles. And as I mentioned, blub
Speaker 3: is not just fat. It is this special type of
Speaker 3: fat tissue which is shaped by evolution for a very
Speaker 3: special purpose, primarily that of a dynamic thermal insulator. So
Speaker 3: in most marine mammals, the blubber layer is a continuous
Speaker 3: covering for almost the entire body, with some exceptions like
Speaker 3: the appendages. Often the flippers won't have blubber. Though it
Speaker 3: does tend to cover the whole body, it doesn't cover
Speaker 3: it evenly everywhere, so the thickness and structure of the
Speaker 3: blubber layer differ on different parts of the body for
Speaker 3: reasons we'll probably get into later.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: While blubber is not just regular fat tissue, it is
Speaker 3: still basically fat tissue. It's similar to regular fat, also
Speaker 3: known as adipose tissue, in that it is made mainly
Speaker 3: of fat cells called adipocytes. Atopocytes are energy storage cells
Speaker 3: that first form in an immature ste age without fat
Speaker 3: or without much fat stored in them. They're initially mostly
Speaker 3: protein and water, and then as the animal is able
Speaker 3: to take in more food energy than needed to sustain
Speaker 3: its metabolism, the extra energy is stored as lipid molecules.
Speaker 3: In the now mature fat cell as atiposites accumulate these
Speaker 3: liquid droplets for storage. They swell up in size, so
Speaker 3: adipocytes are very stretchable cells. Their cells that can grow
Speaker 3: and shrink as needed. When they fill up with fat,
Speaker 3: they stretch and grow. When fat stores are depleted, they
Speaker 3: can shrink back down to size.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Humans, as humans, we tend to have a very
Speaker 2: toxic relationship just with the word fat, almost to the
Speaker 2: point where it colors or creates a barrier to understanding
Speaker 2: its necessity for an organism, or or at least that's
Speaker 2: the way I have often been found in anytime I'm
Speaker 2: reading about like the actual purposes of fat, fatty tissue,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, of course this is actually super important.
Speaker 2: But we're often just coded to, you know, buy the
Speaker 2: media and culture to have to feel a certain way
Speaker 2: about even the idea of a fat in our body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I can see that. Well, I would
Speaker 3: encourage you out there to try to break that shackle
Speaker 3: in your brain, like not to associate, you know, any
Speaker 3: kind of negative cultural ideas or whatever with the idea
Speaker 3: of fat biology. Like, fat is really interesting tissue and
Speaker 3: it's really important, you know, it's almost I would almost
Speaker 3: say it's like the biological equivalent of wealth in a way.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, something that can be accumulated to
Speaker 3: be used later and serves important purposes along the way.
Speaker 3: So these fat cells, they can they can grow and
Speaker 3: shrink as needed, and in most atipos tissue, these fat
Speaker 3: cells are packed densely together and held together by what's
Speaker 3: called an extracellular matrix, a kind of honeycomb mesh or
Speaker 3: three D net made out of things like collagen fibers.
Speaker 3: Collagen is the structural protein found in animal skin and
Speaker 3: in connective tissues. A lot of cooks will be familiar
Speaker 3: with collagen because structural collagen is a major part of
Speaker 3: what makes certain cuts of meat tough, Like tough muscles
Speaker 3: usually have a lot of collagen connective tissue in them,
Speaker 3: and so these are the cuts that typically you have
Speaker 3: to slow cook. You want to cook for a long time,
Speaker 3: maybe with moist heat, and that type of treatment tends
Speaker 3: to turn these tough cuts of meat with a lot
Speaker 3: of collagen tender. It makes them tender because the collagen
Speaker 3: breaks down and turns into gelatin, giving the final product
Speaker 3: a soft texture. This is part of what sets blubber apart.
Speaker 3: Blubber has significantly more of this structural material than most
Speaker 3: adipose tissue in the animal kingdom, more collagen, more elastic fiber.
Speaker 3: And for this reason you can kind of think back
Speaker 3: to the description in Moby Dick of the blubber as saying,
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of like firm, close grained beef,
Speaker 3: but he describes it also as tougher, as elastic and compact.
Speaker 3: There's something dense and springy about it. It's just it's
Speaker 3: tough stuff. And I think a lot of this probably
Speaker 3: comes from this extra collagen and elastic content. I expect
Speaker 3: we'll get more into this in part two when we
Speaker 3: talk about blubber as a food item, which it is,
Speaker 3: especially for people living in the polar regions. But I
Speaker 3: would suspect because of this extra collagen and structural fiber
Speaker 3: that blubber is a good bit chewier and tougher than
Speaker 3: most animal fat. Maybe we'll have to revisit that next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but certainly in the meantime, for any of you
Speaker 2: out there who have personal culinary experience with blubber, go
Speaker 2: ahead and write in.
Speaker 3: Totally yes please. And by the way, Iverson also in
Speaker 3: this entry mentions the textural difference in blubber between blubber
Speaker 3: and regular fat, not in the context of blubber as food.
Speaker 3: She writes that blubber tends to have a quote firm, tough,
Speaker 3: and fibrous character, distinct from most other animal fats, and
Speaker 3: this toughness and strength gives blubber a lot of its
Speaker 3: important adaptive qualities for the marine mammal. Another common structural
Speaker 3: distinction that biologists make about blubber as opposed to other
Speaker 3: adipose tissue is that it is highly vascularized. In Iverson's words, quote,
Speaker 3: blubber also contains numerous blood vessels and specialized shunts called
Speaker 3: arteriovenous anastomoses or avas, which allow larger and swifter blood
Speaker 3: flow than would be possible through the capillaries alone and
Speaker 3: are important to the thermoregulation process. So this is the
Speaker 3: really key thing about blubber as an insulation method. It's
Speaker 3: not just static insulation. Say like a beer cooler. You know,
Speaker 3: a beer cooler is really it's great. Beer cooler provides
Speaker 3: great insulate You can put cold things in, It'll stay
Speaker 3: cold a long time, even on a hot day. You
Speaker 3: can put hot things in it. They'll stay hot for
Speaker 3: a long time. You know, it's great, but how insulating
Speaker 3: the cooler is does not change unless you open the lid.
Speaker 3: Blubber is adapted to selectively either insulate the body and
Speaker 3: keep the blood flow and thus heat exchange to the
Speaker 3: outside minimal, or on the other hand, to allow rapid
Speaker 3: voluminous blood flow through the fat tissue and near the skin,
Speaker 3: including by connecting veins directly to arteries, or I think
Speaker 3: these would be slightly smaller vessels like arterials and you
Speaker 3: know the next step down from veins and arteries directly
Speaker 3: connecting those things. And this is important because it gives
Speaker 3: the animal a lot of control over its internal body temperature.
Speaker 3: The blubber is an insulator that protects body heat against
Speaker 3: the cold water when needed, and then allows the mammal
Speaker 3: to wrap it dump excess heat into the water when needed,
Speaker 3: for example during exertion to make more vigorous activity possible
Speaker 3: without overheating, or just when it goes into hotter, warmer waters.
Speaker 2: So this is going to be an outrageous overstatement of
Speaker 2: the obvious, but sometimes I think these can be helpful,
Speaker 2: like it is helpful to compare the blubber to a
Speaker 2: blanket or a winter coat. But a winter coat or
Speaker 2: a nice blanket is not a part of our body. No,
Speaker 2: the blubber is a living part of the creature's body.
Speaker 2: It is at once the thing it is using to
Speaker 2: maintain its temperature and also the flesh that is being maintained.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like if a coat were part of your body,
Speaker 3: and you could flip a switch to make the coat
Speaker 3: either make you hotter or make you colder. Now, this
Speaker 3: is another thing we will explore more as we go on,
Speaker 3: but it's important to note that there are huge variations
Speaker 3: in blubber thickness among marine mammals. I'm not sure if
Speaker 3: the numbers that Melville gives in mobi deck about the
Speaker 3: average thickness of a sperm whales blubber layer are correct,
Speaker 3: But I don't know. Maybe he's in the zone, but
Speaker 3: I have questions about that. But there is at least
Speaker 3: large variability between species and between individuals. So as animal
Speaker 3: bodies get bigger, of course, it tends to be the
Speaker 3: case that volume increases more rapidly than surface area. This
Speaker 3: is sometimes known as the square cube law in animal
Speaker 3: body sizes, and as a result, larger species tend to
Speaker 3: have much thicker layers of blubber, so some examples given
Speaker 3: by Iversen in this entry are that you might get
Speaker 3: arrange for like seven to ten centimeters of blubber in
Speaker 3: a lot of adult seals, and then up to twenty
Speaker 3: to thirty centimeters in fin whales, and then up to
Speaker 3: fifty centimeters of blubber in the bowhead whale, which I'm
Speaker 3: to understand is one of the most shocking and amazing
Speaker 3: blubber carriers in nature. Maybe the raining champion. I think
Speaker 3: we're gonna you've got some stuff about the bowhead whale,
Speaker 3: don't you, Rob.
Speaker 2: Yes, we'll definitely be coming back to the bowhead whale
Speaker 2: here in a bit. Now, I do want a note
Speaker 2: real quick that in the different sources we were looking
Speaker 2: at for this episode, we did find that sided blubber
Speaker 2: thickness for specific species of whale can vary quite a bit.
Speaker 2: And I'm to understand this depends on what sort of
Speaker 2: criteria you're using for measuring of the thickness, not so
Speaker 2: much that like this source is wrong and this source
Speaker 2: is right right.
Speaker 3: So Iverson in this entry says that like, the bowhead
Speaker 3: can be up to fifty centimeters of thickness. I don't
Speaker 3: know if that's like at the absolute maximum the thickest
Speaker 3: place or something, or if that's referring to an average.
Speaker 3: But I think you had the book by Karwadine that
Speaker 3: cited a lower figure but still a huge amount of blubber.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, so either in either case, the bowhead whale
Speaker 2: is the best. If you will, it is the most
Speaker 2: bloody best. And we'll, yeah, we'll come back for a
Speaker 2: little more on the bowhead because I think it will
Speaker 2: be illustrated to get into to get to know the
Speaker 2: most blobbery whale, and in so doing learn why it
Speaker 2: is so blubbery.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another thing that's amazing about these animals with these
Speaker 3: thick blubber layers is how rapidly it can accumulate in
Speaker 3: like a newborn marine mammal as it nurses. Iverson talks
Speaker 3: about this, this idea that newborn seals have very little
Speaker 3: blubber when they're born. They instead, the newborns usually rely
Speaker 3: on fur for insulation, fur or maybe a fine type
Speaker 3: of mammal hair found on newborns called lenugo, and these
Speaker 3: baby seals cope with their lack of blubber by simply
Speaker 3: delaying entry into the water. So you know, most baby
Speaker 3: seals are born on land or born on ice, and
Speaker 3: they'll have to wait until sufficient fat stores are built
Speaker 3: up before they can dive in and go for that
Speaker 3: wet life. But the blubber accumulates fast, So Iverson mentions
Speaker 3: the example of a newborn harp seal or of Foca grenlandica,
Speaker 3: in which blubber is only on average about six percent
Speaker 3: of body mass when the seal is newly born and
Speaker 3: the blubber is only made of about twenty percent fat,
Speaker 3: and then after a mere twelve day lactation period, the
Speaker 3: baby seals are often up to fifty percent blubber by
Speaker 3: weight and the blubber is ninety percent fat, So six
Speaker 3: percent of the body to fifty percent of the body
Speaker 3: in twelve days. And you can see the opposite during
Speaker 3: times of fasting when adults are separated from food, for
Speaker 3: example nursing mothers. We can talk about that in a bit.
Speaker 3: When adult marine mammals can't get food, fat stores rapidly deplete.
Speaker 3: So what types of lipid molecules do you find in
Speaker 3: marine mammal blubber. Well, marine mammal fats are mostly made
Speaker 3: up of fats that these animals get directly from their
Speaker 3: food sources, including long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFA,
Speaker 3: and what Iversen calls quote unique fatty acids produced at
Speaker 3: lower trophic levels of the marine ecosystem, meaning fats from
Speaker 3: lower down the ocean food chain. That's the majority of it.
Speaker 3: But marine mammals can also make their own fat. They
Speaker 3: can synthesize fat molecules from excess amino acids in the diet.
Speaker 3: I think they probably could make fat out of carbohydrates
Speaker 3: as well, but the diet of a marine mammal is
Speaker 3: extremely low in carbohydrates. Usually they're doing that Atkins diet life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in many cases, but certainly with the maleene whales,
Speaker 2: we're talking about the consumption of a lot of tiny
Speaker 2: oceanic organisms.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I think we need to come back to
Speaker 3: the idea of blubber as thermoregulation, because this is a
Speaker 3: big deal. This is a big part of the evolutionary
Speaker 3: function of blubber. In general, fat is an insulator. It
Speaker 3: slows the exchange of heat. And I've read about some
Speaker 3: fun looking experiments designed for kids just to illustrate this.
Speaker 3: I kind of want to do one with my daughter.
Speaker 3: I didn't have time to do it before we did
Speaker 3: this episode today, but maybe I'll get around to it soon.
Speaker 3: So one of these experiments is called the Crisco glove
Speaker 3: or the blubber glove test. So the way it works
Speaker 3: is you get a bucket of ice bucket of ice water,
Speaker 3: and then you make a couple of mittens out of
Speaker 3: ziploc bags. So one is going to be your control mitten.
Speaker 3: That's just two bags, one bag inside of the other
Speaker 3: with nothing in them, and then your hand is inserted
Speaker 3: into the inner bag and then the other pair of
Speaker 3: bags is your test mitten. So your hand goes into
Speaker 3: the inner plastic bag, and then that bag goes into
Speaker 3: a second plastic bag with a layer of vegetable shortening
Speaker 3: in between the two bags. And then the idea is
Speaker 3: when you dip both hands into the water, you will
Speaker 3: feel the difference. The layer of shortening in the test
Speaker 3: bag insulates your hand and keeps it warm against the
Speaker 3: cold water, while the hand in the control bag will
Speaker 3: rapidly lose heat in the ice water and start to
Speaker 3: feel very cold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet kids love this experiment. It has all
Speaker 2: the hallmarks of a great kids science experiments. It has
Speaker 2: sliminess and goofiness, it has immersion in another substance. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm a little shocked. I'd never heard of it till now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, it's a great illustration of this principle.
Speaker 3: That's not just about blubber and marine mammals. Marine mammals
Speaker 3: are not the only animals that use fat as a
Speaker 3: form of insulation against the cold. There is a common
Speaker 3: adaptation throughout the animal kingdom, but marine mammals face some
Speaker 3: specific challenges when it comes to thermoregulation. First of all,
Speaker 3: they live in the water, and cold water remove heat
Speaker 3: from the body more rapidly than air of the same temperature.
Speaker 3: If you doubt this, just try it. Just feel the
Speaker 3: difference between standing naked in a room where the air
Speaker 3: is sixty degrees fahrenheit and then standing naked in sixty
Speaker 3: degree fahrenheit water. The difference is unbelievable. It is starting.
Speaker 3: The former is probably going to be a bit uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: depending on your preferences. The latter is shocking. It will
Speaker 3: make you gasp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've conducted this very experiment at the local YMCA
Speaker 2: pool before.
Speaker 3: Oh, does it get that cold?
Speaker 2: There and on. Sometimes it does, so it generally it
Speaker 2: would mean that there's been a malfunction with the pool
Speaker 2: heaters or I mean, that's the most extreme case. But
Speaker 2: I've also found that if there's like a rapid change
Speaker 2: in temperature, like we go from a reasonably warm day
Speaker 2: to suddenly it's winter weather, there's going to be a
Speaker 2: little lag sometimes in the pool catching up. Ooh, so yeah,
Speaker 2: those are the mornings. So mainly they heat or failure
Speaker 2: days where you're really shocked when you jump in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, same temperature, but the colt but the water
Speaker 3: at that temperature is so so much more of a
Speaker 3: shock to your body. Water has a thermal conductivity about
Speaker 3: twenty five times that of air, so it's just able
Speaker 3: to remove heat from your body so much faster. And
Speaker 3: when you are surrounded by air, you also usually benefit
Speaker 3: from a thin layer of warmer air that just hovers
Speaker 3: around your skin. Warmed by your body, this small layer
Speaker 3: of warmer air provides some insulation for you in itself.
Speaker 3: No such luck really in the water. The water absorbs
Speaker 3: your body's heat directly to whatever stint. There is a
Speaker 3: warm layer of water around your body. When you're in
Speaker 3: the water, it's microscopically tiny and does not really do
Speaker 3: anything to help keep you warm. So you just out
Speaker 3: of luck there.
Speaker 2: Your only help is going to come the form of
Speaker 2: bodily exercise. Are getting dry, yeah, or getting out yeah,
Speaker 2: the transitioning to the hot tub for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So cold water is just so much more unforgiving than
Speaker 3: cold air. And so that's one thing. They're in the water.
Speaker 3: The other thing is marine mammals, like all mammals, are
Speaker 3: homeothermic indotherms. They produce their own body heat, and their
Speaker 3: bodies need to stay warm or they will rapidly lose
Speaker 3: functionality and die. They are not like there are animals
Speaker 3: that whose body temperature can fluctuate much more throughout and
Speaker 3: the animal will be okay. You know, homeothermic endo therms
Speaker 3: are not like that. The water is a harsh place
Speaker 3: for a homeothermic endotherm to live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Malvell alludes to this wonderful in that passage
Speaker 2: you're at. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So to get around this, marine mammals, they've got several adaptations.
Speaker 3: One is size. Marine mammals are larger on average than
Speaker 3: terrestrial mammals. Even the smallest marine mammals are pretty big,
Speaker 3: especially when you think about the actual average size of
Speaker 3: terrestrial mammals. I mean, there are so many extremely tiny
Speaker 3: terrestrial mammals. I haven't calculated it, but I would guess
Speaker 3: the average size of a terrestrial mammal is like a
Speaker 3: large rat or something. But marine mammals, the smallest ones
Speaker 3: are still fairly big by land mammal size. And this
Speaker 3: is evolution taking advantage of the square cube law. Again.
Speaker 3: As animal bodies get bigger, volume increases more rapidly than
Speaker 3: surface area, and animals lose heat to the environment through
Speaker 3: their skin through their external surface area. So the internal
Speaker 3: body volume makes and holds the heat, and then the
Speaker 3: surface area, which decreases in proportion to that volume as
Speaker 3: the animal gets bigger, is what loses the heat. Thus,
Speaker 3: bigger body, greater relative heat retention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just a one more note on the largeness
Speaker 2: of marine mammals, I mean, the biggest of the marine mammals,
Speaker 2: the blue whale is not only the biggest whale and
Speaker 2: the biggest vertebrate and mammal alive today, it is the
Speaker 2: biggest vertebrate and largest animal known to have ever existed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a body plan that works in the water.
Speaker 3: Big bodies help you stay warm in the cold water.
Speaker 3: But the size is one thing. I Everson notes that
Speaker 3: then the other thing, of course, is insulation. Now, blubber
Speaker 3: is not the only form of insulation used by marine mammals.
Speaker 3: In some cases, these animals rely on fur, which tends
Speaker 3: to work best in air, specifically because fur works by
Speaker 3: trapping one of those insulating layers of air around the body,
Speaker 3: so it traps air as insulation. But in cases where
Speaker 3: fur would be less effective, like for animals that live
Speaker 3: underwater all the time, blubber is going to be the
Speaker 3: better option, especially because blubber works in both air and
Speaker 3: in water. So in animals that live in the water
Speaker 3: and then come out of the water, like some seals
Speaker 3: and so forth, blubber is still going to be helpful
Speaker 3: because it works in both places. Interestingly, some marine mammals,
Speaker 3: like sea otters, are able to use fur as insulation
Speaker 3: even in the water. And I got interested in why
Speaker 3: this is. It seems like this is because their fur
Speaker 3: is so good at trapping air. It can actually carry
Speaker 3: an insulating layer of air with them when they dive.
Speaker 3: So they go into the water and they take a
Speaker 3: little bubble with them that's trapped in their fur. It
Speaker 3: seems like this doesn't work, maybe if they dive too deep,
Speaker 3: where water pressure will compress or push out the bubbles
Speaker 3: of air and the insulation will be lost. And this
Speaker 3: is probably why you only see the preference for fur
Speaker 3: over blubber retained in marine or semimarine mammals like otters
Speaker 3: and polar bears, which spend significant time in the air
Speaker 3: up on the land or on the ice and don't
Speaker 3: need to dive too deep or for too long. As
Speaker 3: I talked about earlier, bluffer is an amazing adaptation for
Speaker 3: heat control because it is not a passive static form
Speaker 3: of insulation. It's dynamic and it can change its insulating
Speaker 3: properties as needed in the moment, particularly by changing how
Speaker 3: it channels blood flow. So when warm arterial blood from
Speaker 3: the center of the body flows out toward the skin,
Speaker 3: it loses heat to the surrounding water and cools the body.
Speaker 3: When that arterial blood is kept away from the skin,
Speaker 3: it retains heat. And because blubber is so vascularized, it
Speaker 3: can switch this heat exchanging blood flow on or off
Speaker 3: depending on what the animal needs. So in cold water
Speaker 3: it can keep the blood further inside, keep it away
Speaker 3: from the skin, and in warmer water or when the
Speaker 3: animal is working out, it can open up the vessels
Speaker 3: and shunts and allow the blood to dump heat into
Speaker 3: the surrounding water through the skin. Unsurprisingly, given the we've
Speaker 3: already talked about, marine mammals that live at higher latitudes
Speaker 3: or swim in colder waters tend to have thicker blubber
Speaker 3: for their body size, and the smallest cetaceans are usually
Speaker 3: not found at the highest latitudes.
Speaker 2: You need extreme bodies for extreme environments.
Speaker 3: Yes, Now, one more thing I want to mention before
Speaker 3: we get into your bowhead example, is another thing iverson
Speaker 3: goes into, which is the specific role of blubber for
Speaker 3: energy storage in marine mammals. Of course, you know, energy
Speaker 3: storage is one of the main purposes of fat across
Speaker 3: all the animal species that use it, but it has
Speaker 3: a special role for marine mammals, especially in species that
Speaker 3: migrate across great distances, using one environment for forage during
Speaker 3: a fattening season, and then a different, sometimes far away
Speaker 3: environment for important parts of their reproductive cycle. For example,
Speaker 3: billen whales that travel to high latitudes in the summer
Speaker 3: for feeding opportunities because of summertime booms and their planktonic
Speaker 3: food sources at higher latitudes, and then we'll travel down
Speaker 3: into warmer waters to give birth, to lactate and rear
Speaker 3: their newborns.
Speaker 2: Gray whales are a great example of this, and wescuss
Speaker 2: them in previous episodes.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, so I think you observed grey whales
Speaker 3: off the Pacific coast of Mexico.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Yes? I did. This was very much
Speaker 2: they're breeding grounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So this is where they're raising their
Speaker 3: young and then when season changes, they would travel back
Speaker 3: up to around Alaska off the you know, the western
Speaker 3: coast of North America for feeding opportunities. And even when
Speaker 3: great global migrations are not involved, reproduction and marine mammals
Speaker 3: often takes these animals away from feeding opportunities, for example,
Speaker 3: winter dinning for the birth and nursing of cubs and
Speaker 3: female polar bears. And this is especially interesting because of
Speaker 3: the increased metabolic demand on female mammals to produce milk
Speaker 3: after birth. So you know, after the mammal gives birth,
Speaker 3: the mother's body is working overtime to synthesize rich, highly
Speaker 3: caloric nourishment for the newborn. In most mammals, the mother
Speaker 3: needs to draw on fat reserves and feed herself externally
Speaker 3: during this period to lactate enough for her young. But amazingly,
Speaker 3: some baline whales and large seals are able to nurse
Speaker 3: their young without eating hardly at all, drawing almost entirely
Speaker 3: from blubber reserves, and this is very unusual in nature,
Speaker 3: Iversen writes. Quote in species that fast through lactation, females
Speaker 3: switch almost completely to a fat based metabolism. For instance,
Speaker 3: during a sixteen day lactation period, a gray seal female
Speaker 3: draws ninety seven percent of the energy supplied to her
Speaker 3: pup solely from her blubber stores. Wow and note that
Speaker 3: the mother's blubber reserves during gestation will also dictate how
Speaker 3: much blubber the pup is going to be born with
Speaker 3: and then from here. Blubber also still plays an important
Speaker 3: role in reproduction in the development of the young for
Speaker 3: the pups because the blubber that they've gained during nursing
Speaker 3: and that they're born with will sustain them after nursing
Speaker 3: is over and until they're able to feed themselves. Blubber
Speaker 3: Iverson notes is also an important reserve of internal water.
Speaker 3: I never really thought about this but she gives the
Speaker 3: example of gray seals during lactation. The mother seal is
Speaker 3: going to be losing a lot of water through milk
Speaker 3: production and is fasting on land to feed her pups,
Speaker 3: so she's not able to replenish water stores externally. Extra
Speaker 3: water comes from the oxidation of fat reserves in blubber
Speaker 3: for metabolism, because when you burn fat inside your body,
Speaker 3: water is a natural byproduct of that chemical reaction. This
Speaker 3: is called metabolic water. So metabolic water is produced, and
Speaker 3: then that provides water that the mother mammal needs. Now,
Speaker 3: I want to note that in this entry, Everson also
Speaker 3: gets into a lot of other interesting stuff about the
Speaker 3: role of blubber and locomotion, buoyancy, movement, and other things.
Speaker 3: We might talk more about those topics in the next
Speaker 3: part in this series, but we want to definitely have
Speaker 3: time today to talk about the bowhead whale.
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, And I think it'll be a helpful
Speaker 2: exercise here to take everything we've discussed so far and
Speaker 2: then look at a specific example of a high blubber
Speaker 2: species and see how things begin to line up. And
Speaker 2: as referenced to earlier, I got this information from the
Speaker 2: Handbook of Whales, Dolphins and Porposes of the World by
Speaker 2: Mark Cardine. An excellent book for a anyone who just
Speaker 2: wants to read about whales at home, or if there's
Speaker 2: any possibility that you'll get to see one out in
Speaker 2: the world going on any kind of like a whale
Speaker 2: sight seeing tour, you know, And these are available all
Speaker 2: over the place. It's worth having a copy of the book.
Speaker 2: It's it's mobile. I've lent it to friends who have
Speaker 2: gone on cruises before. It's a great read, lots of illustrations.
Speaker 2: It informs you and also helps you in identifying what
Speaker 2: you're looking.
Speaker 3: At in the wild.
Speaker 2: So we've already you know, mentioned you know what blubber is,
Speaker 2: who has it? We've also mentioned, you know, what are
Speaker 2: the biggest blubber containing animals out there. Obviously the blue
Speaker 2: whale is going to be the biggest blubber animal. But
Speaker 2: just because you're the largest blubber creature out there, it
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean you're the animal with the most blubber
Speaker 2: or the most blubber you know, for your body. The
Speaker 2: true blubber superstar is not the enormous blue whale. It's
Speaker 2: not the fin whale, it's not the mighty sperm whale,
Speaker 2: but it's rather the whale species it's often ranked fifth
Speaker 2: in overall size, and that is the bowhead whale.
Speaker 3: I just looked it up because I wanted to make
Speaker 3: sure I was picturing the correct whale in my mind.
Speaker 3: And the bowhead whale is going to be the one
Speaker 3: that has some sort of bone structure or structure in
Speaker 3: the head above the sort of curve of the mouth
Speaker 3: that looks like a hump. It almost looks like a
Speaker 3: kind of bump in the nose, but it's on top
Speaker 3: of the whale's head up above the eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, these are These are big, girthy whales, up
Speaker 2: to eighteen meters nearly sixty feet in length, weighing up
Speaker 2: to one hundred and seventy tons, and on the girth front,
Speaker 2: their maximum girth can exceed seventy percent of total length.
Speaker 2: So these are big creatures, not as big as the
Speaker 2: blue whale by most you know, measuring sticks, but it
Speaker 2: is the whale with the most blubber. And we'll get
Speaker 2: back to how it's it has a huge head, and
Speaker 2: we'll get back to one of what that uh sort
Speaker 2: of hump portion of the head is for. Uh, But yeah,
Speaker 2: these are These are enormous creatures. Uh. And in terms
Speaker 2: of the size rankings, they're generally ranked behind the right
Speaker 2: whale right as in right handed or right as incorrect.
Speaker 2: The right whale is just a little behind the bowhead
Speaker 2: whale and overall size. In fact, they look a lot alike.
Speaker 2: The bowhead whale was once known as the greenland right whale. Briefly,
Speaker 2: there are three varieties of right whale. The pygmy right
Speaker 2: whale is not a true right whale, and the name
Speaker 2: right whale is thought to refer to one of two things,
Speaker 2: possibly both at the same time. So first of all,
Speaker 2: there's English whaling wisdom that right whales were the correct whales,
Speaker 2: the right whales to hunt, because they had this trifecta
Speaker 2: of features. They were slow, so easy to chase down
Speaker 2: and kill, and then when you did kill them, they
Speaker 2: were so buoyant from their blubber that they floated. They
Speaker 2: definitely floated, so they were easier to harvest. And then
Speaker 2: when they were harvested they produced high amounts of oil
Speaker 2: and balen per individual. And the oil, of course is key.
Speaker 2: We'll get into the balen as well. But in terms
Speaker 2: of the bowhead whale, and the right whale species, they
Speaker 2: have a lot of blubber, and therefore they produced a
Speaker 2: lot of whale oil. Because whale oil was made from
Speaker 2: rendered blubber. This was the product of whaling that was
Speaker 2: most important to the whaling industry generally, certainly in its
Speaker 2: later industrialized stages. You know, humans have hunted whales for
Speaker 2: a very long time, but you know, whale oil was
Speaker 2: one of the major products during the most destructive heyday
Speaker 2: of human whaling. Now. But the other side of the
Speaker 2: coin is that, apparently, according to Carwadine, mid nineteenth century
Speaker 2: scientific observations were made that these were the right whales
Speaker 2: in that they were true and proper examples of what
Speaker 2: a whale should be. Which I have a little harder
Speaker 2: time wrapping my head around that one, because I mean
Speaker 2: it's like, what is the best whale? I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: they're all they're all whales. But I think it comes
Speaker 2: down to just sort of like basic body size identifiable
Speaker 2: as a whale. It is a bleen whale and so forth.
Speaker 2: All right, So coming back to the bowhead whale, Yes,
Speaker 2: this is your blubber superstar baileina mistacetis, which means mustached whale.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it's going to be something about mysterious
Speaker 2: whale or something, but no, it's mustached whale. And this
Speaker 2: refers to the bowhead whales bleen plates. We talked about
Speaker 2: baileen plates previously in our episode on gray whales. These are,
Speaker 2: of course the big filtery teeth like structures in the
Speaker 2: mouth that home through plankton or the marine animals that
Speaker 2: they are consuming. And for the bowhead whale, these are
Speaker 2: the longest of any animal, up to four meters or
Speaker 2: even five point two meters, so we're talking thirteen to
Speaker 2: seventeen feet long these baleen plates individually, and they're you know,
Speaker 2: hundreds of them in their mouths. And the name bowhead
Speaker 2: stems from their large, strongly arched or bow shaped rostrum
Speaker 2: and mouthline.
Speaker 3: Okay, for a second, I thought that was what I
Speaker 3: was talking about earlier, but the rosterum and the mouth
Speaker 3: line would be different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this's more below and moving towards the front. What
Speaker 2: you're talking about is on the top of the head,
Speaker 2: and it's going to come into play here in just
Speaker 2: a minute. Okay, So the key to the bowhead's massive
Speaker 2: blubber reserves here is that it is an Arctic specialist.
Speaker 2: It more than anything lives up to that Melville line,
Speaker 2: immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters
Speaker 2: because it lives exclusively in the Arctic and Subarctic, and
Speaker 2: it is the only baileen whale to do so. It
Speaker 2: ventures up into the high Arctic during the summer again
Speaker 2: like all like other baileen whales, it moves north, chasing
Speaker 2: those blooms and the richness of food that it can
Speaker 2: that it can achieve up there. But these guys go
Speaker 2: really far north and then during the winter they go
Speaker 2: back into the lower and Subarctic, but are thought to
Speaker 2: stay close to the ice edge. So for whales of
Speaker 2: this species venturing down into the Bearing Sea, that's snowbird behavior.
Speaker 2: That's like pretty much as southern as they go. They're
Speaker 2: definitely not going down to Mexico.
Speaker 3: Nice tropical vacation in Alaska, off the coast of Alaska.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean this. I think this is the
Speaker 2: most important thing to keep in mind about about them
Speaker 2: and about the role of blubber in their lives is
Speaker 2: that they they are extremists. They live in the cold
Speaker 2: waters all the time and have are always in close
Speaker 2: proximity to sea ice, so they have to have that insulation,
Speaker 2: and they have to have more insulation than any of
Speaker 2: the other whales in the sea. Now, like other whales,
Speaker 2: their main predator outside of human whalers, of course, is
Speaker 2: the orca. And according to Carwodine, the bowhead whale's close
Speaker 2: association with sea ice maybe how it primarily protects itself
Speaker 2: from killer whales that tend to avoid extensive Arctic sea ice.
Speaker 2: The problem, of course is that due to climate change,
Speaker 2: there is less and less sea ice out there to
Speaker 2: protect them. So it's you know, kind of an open
Speaker 2: question of how they will adapt and how they are
Speaker 2: adapting to these changes. Now, coming back to what you
Speaker 2: noted earlier about the shape, the upper shape of the
Speaker 2: bowhead's enormous head. It lives in close proximity to sea ice,
Speaker 2: and it will venture under sea ice when it's feeding,
Speaker 2: and it can stay down for an extended period of
Speaker 2: time depending on what it's doing and what the circumstances are. Well,
Speaker 2: as with other whales, it's like if they were observed
Speaker 2: while being chased by whalers, like, they can stay down
Speaker 2: even longer. But bowhead whales will come up under the
Speaker 2: ice and they can break through ice that is up
Speaker 2: to sixty centimeters almost two feet thick. Whoa yeah, in
Speaker 2: order to create their own breathing holes in the ice
Speaker 2: large enough for that raised hump like part of their
Speaker 2: enormous head to come out and allow their their blowhole
Speaker 2: to gain access to the air.
Speaker 3: It's hard to imagine that's true. They can break through
Speaker 3: two feet thick of ice, Yeah, sixty unbel but that
Speaker 3: would make more sense to me if if it is
Speaker 3: true that they can take refuge from their only potential
Speaker 3: predators by venturing further, you know, staying around the ice
Speaker 3: and venturing further under the ice than their predator is
Speaker 3: willing to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and also further under the ice than their
Speaker 2: competitors willing to go. There are other, of course, far
Speaker 2: northern aquatic mammals. You know, we've talked about nar walls before,
Speaker 2: but the bowhead whales are pretty exceptional here.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: The blubber, of course, provides them that thermal insulation we've
Speaker 2: been talking about physical predection, protection against environmental hazards certainly
Speaker 2: as well as those energy stores. How much blubber do
Speaker 2: they have? Well, as we noted earlier, your sources are
Speaker 2: going to vary depending on how they're measuring the blubber,
Speaker 2: and it's also going to depend on where on the
Speaker 2: body you're looking at. Carbadine says five point five to
Speaker 2: twenty eight centimeters or roughly two inches to eleven inches
Speaker 2: in thickness, so up to nearly a foot of thickness
Speaker 2: in general, So again the thickest of any whale, depending
Speaker 2: on how you're measuring it. The bowhead whale is still
Speaker 2: going to be at the top of any list.
Speaker 3: In one sense, I'm thinking, man, I would love to
Speaker 3: see a cross section of that. But then on the
Speaker 3: other hand, of like, oh, that's a little too real,
Speaker 3: I guess because of the familiarity with the whaling contact
Speaker 3: with it, you know, they really would be cut up
Speaker 3: like that. But yeah, seeing a cross section of that
Speaker 3: tissue I'm sure is amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, because again they were heavily targeted by whalers
Speaker 2: because like the right whales, they're also slow, deliberate swimmers.
Speaker 2: We talked in the in previous episodes about whales how
Speaker 2: you basically different to Different whales have different ways of
Speaker 2: dealing with the threat of orcas, and it generally comes
Speaker 2: down to, like, are you going to try to outrun
Speaker 2: it or are you going to fight it off? And
Speaker 2: the bowhead whales are not going to outrun the orcas,
Speaker 2: and they will turn and fight if needed. But again
Speaker 2: it also seems like refuge in the sea ice is
Speaker 2: also part of their strategy. But since they are slow,
Speaker 2: deliberate swimmers, that's one of the reasons that humans thought
Speaker 2: that they were ideal whales for hunting. You know. Sadly
Speaker 2: this is as with you know, like other whale species,
Speaker 2: like the gray whales. It's it's written that they are
Speaker 2: rather cureious about humans. That they encounter humans and boats
Speaker 2: and so forth, you know, they'll come up and take
Speaker 2: a look, which you know, makes it even all the
Speaker 2: more tragic that we were so brutal towards them. Again
Speaker 2: during this highly industrial period of human whaling, when they
Speaker 2: were you know, intensely hunted and threatened, and as human
Speaker 2: whalers took advantage of that slow speed, their rich balen
Speaker 2: and their blubber and the latter of which of course
Speaker 2: also made them so buoyant. So all these things made
Speaker 2: them ideal prey for whaling enterprises.
Speaker 3: But also such an amazing example of what Melville talks
Speaker 3: about the you know, the the rare virtue of the
Speaker 3: strong individual vitality, the thick walls, and the virtue of
Speaker 3: interior spaciousness that takes his weather with him where he
Speaker 3: goes and is immersed to his lips for life in
Speaker 3: those Arctic waters.
Speaker 2: Joe, you mentioned your desire to see a cross section
Speaker 2: of the bowhead whale. Quick image search revealed several very
Speaker 2: interesting looking cross sections illustrations of course, so I would
Speaker 2: encourage folks to look those up in general, Like the
Speaker 2: inside of a whale is always fascinating because you know,
Speaker 2: their bone structure is so unique and alien but also familiar.
Speaker 2: You know, we can't help but imagine if we ourselves
Speaker 2: embarked on some on such an evolutionary journey of the body.
Speaker 2: And just also the scale that they're on. Anytime there's
Speaker 2: there's a reminder of just like how big is a
Speaker 2: human compared to you know, the guts of a particularly
Speaker 2: large whale. It's just it's mind Rand.
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, are you excited to talk about blubber for
Speaker 3: at least one more episode?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah, yeah, we we we barely scratch the surface
Speaker 2: of the blubber when it comes to human uses for it.
Speaker 2: I don't you know. We may come back to whale oil,
Speaker 2: but there's so many other uses for certainly the colon
Speaker 2: uses I think we're going to be very interesting to
Speaker 2: get into, which tend to be tied to older whaling traditions,
Speaker 2: that we're more in balance with the creature's natural patterns. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but as we said, certainly right in if you have
Speaker 2: any Glover thoughts right now, and maybe they will, there'll
Speaker 2: be something that we'll read in the next episode or
Speaker 2: at least in a later listener mail episode. Just a
Speaker 2: reminder to everyone out there that's Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays
Speaker 2: and on Fridays. We just set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 2: to talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.