WEBVTT - Thar She Blows, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:08.880 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:15.920 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:16.840 name is Robert. 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.720 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So a few weeks back 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:24.079 on the show, we did a series of episodes on 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:28.240 the Pacific gray whale. That series was based on some 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:32.040 actual travels that you and your family did rob with 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.159 where you got to encounter these wonderful beasts up close. 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.360 But ever since then, I've had a bit of a 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:43.239 low grade whale fever, and so based on maybe not 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:47.280 physical travels in the world, but literary travels of the mind, 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:51.080 I've been drawn back to the subject of wales. Today. 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:55.080 We are returning to talk not about a particular species 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:59.760 of whale, but about a particular anatomical feature common to wales, 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:04.760 the respiratory orifice of the cetacean, known as the spout 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:08.640 or the spiracle, or most commonly today, the blowhole. 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:12.000 That's right, one of the most famous features of the whale. 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:14.560 If you know nothing else about the whale, if your 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:18.640 knowledge of whale anatomy is limited to cartoons and emojis, 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:23.480 you know something of the spout, you may have the 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:25.640 wrong idea of what it's all about, and we'll get 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:28.120 into that in this episode. But you know that whales 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:29.360 do this right. 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.720 The saying is not thar she filter feeds. The saying 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:36.560 is thar she blows right now. I actually became interested 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:40.600 in this subject because I was reading a chapter in 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:45.119 the great American whale novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:50.400 Basic plot summary. A wandering young man named Ishmael and 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:54.360 his new companion quek weig enlist on a whale ship 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.720 captained by a man named Ahab, who is on a 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:04.800 revenge quest against a sperm whale that previously removed his leg. 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:07.080 A classic tale. Even if you're not familiar with the 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:09.720 with the book itself, you've probably seen one of the 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:11.840 many film adaptations over the years. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.720 Yes, though, you know if you just watch a movie, 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:17.760 there is a quality to the text of Moby Dick 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:20.280 that probably won't quite come across because this is not 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:24.600 a strictly plot oriented story. It's not a novel where 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:26.880 the action of the plot always just kind of proceeds 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:31.080 ahead at a predictable pace. Many chapters of this book 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:38.000 are more like self contained informational or meditational essays on 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.160 subjects of all kinds. So there are little There are 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:43.800 chapters that are essays about the tackle and equipment of 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:47.640 whaling vessels, the monkey rope, the harpoon that you know, 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.320 all the different things. There are chapters about the accuracy 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:56.760 or relative lack thereof, of whale illustrations in books. There's 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.760 a chapter about clam chowder. There are chapters about way heads. 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:04.080 There's one chapter where he does phrenology on a whale head. 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:09.800 There are chapters about whale skin, whale tails, et cetera. Now, 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:14.160 when it comes to the quote seatology of Moby Dick, 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:17.560 it seems to be Melville is all over the place, 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:21.680 sourcing his information in some cases from published works of 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.920 naturalists of his day, which was, of course, of you know, 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:28.400 we would judge, by the scientific standards of today, of 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:31.760 mixed quality to begin with. And in other cases he 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:34.320 seems to be relying on kind of the trade knowledge 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:39.040 of sailors and whalemen. Some of his biological observations I 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:44.120 think seem fairly keen, and others are bizarre or downright implausible. 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.960 A very commonly cited example, though I don't know if 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.080 this represents the personal belief of Melville of the author 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.040 the narrator, Ishmael is firmly committed to the claim that 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:58.080 whales are fish. They are not, They're mammals. In fact, 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:01.280 I was reading about this in a paper called Herman 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:05.520 Melville Marine Biologist, by Harold Morowitz, published in The Biological 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:10.200 Bulletin in twenty eleven about the idea that whales are mammals. 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:14.200 Morowitz rights, quote this was not a new finding. Aristotle 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:18.280 in History of Animals some twenty two hundred years earlier. Oh, actually, 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:23.160 he's saying earlier than Linnaeus had noticed the difference between 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.760 members of the whales and porpoises and other marine inhabitants 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.680 the fish. He based this distinction on the cetaceans having 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.679 the mammalian properties of being warm blooded, breathing air through lungs, 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:38.920 and feeding the young through memory glands. Melville, though through 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.960 his spokesman Ishmael, strongly disagreed and was willing to place 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:46.360 the anecdotal knowledge of a seaman against the formal knowledge 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.480 of academics. He insists that a whale is quote a 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:52.239 spouting fish with a horizontal tail. 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:54.599 Well, I guess this kind of falls under the whole 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:59.880 semen versus landsman sort of thing, right, like woad Aristotle, No, 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:02.320 never served on a whaling vessel. 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:04.279 That's right. This kind of came up in our Grey 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.080 Whale series two. What was the context? So was it 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.919 arguments about how aggressive actually the gray whale is. 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:15.040 Yeah, if you go by the accounts of whalers who 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:18.680 did get to you know, throw in their their, their, their, 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:23.120 their two cents and name various things about whales as well. Yeah, 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:26.200 according to them, the gray whale is just an absolute monster, 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.080 you know, that will just absolutely destroy anything in its path, 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:33.760 which it's certainly capable of, as we discuss if it 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:37.280 has been provoked, but if it's not provoked, it as 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:39.520 a very peaceful and curious creature. Right. 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:43.400 So anyway, the narrator Ishmael's claims about whales, while in 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:47.560 my opinion always fascinating, are a mixed bag of some 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:53.560 sharp observations, some weird untruths, as well as ambiguous claims 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:56.440 somewhere in the middle. And I came across a number 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:00.400 of all of the above recently in chapter eighty five 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:04.040 of this book, which is called the Fountain. This chapter 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:08.240 is a consideration of the blowhole of the whale and 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:11.680 the towering exhalations from it, which, by the way, are 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:15.440 of great significance to whalers, because the spoutings of the 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:19.039 blowhole are what whalers use to cite the whales out 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:20.640 on the open sea and track them down. 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.279 Yeah, that's the varsy blows, right. I love that this 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:26.479 chapter is called the Fountain because, as we'll discuss, like 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.080 even the title of this chapter is deceptive. 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.000 Right, So Rob, if you don't mind, I'm gonna I'm 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:34.679 gonna set the themes here by reading the first couple 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:36.960 of paragraphs of this chapter excellently. 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.200 Are you gonna use the sailor voice from that? 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:44.760 I'm not gonna do pirate voice. Okay, I'm not strong enough. Okay. 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:47.240 So this is from Moby Dick by Herman Melville, the 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:51.359 chapter The Fountain that for six thousand years, and no 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.640 one knows how many millions of ages before, the great 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:58.320 whales should have been spouting all over the sea and 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:02.080 sprinkling and mystifying the gardens of the deep, as with 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.880 so many sprinkling or mystifying pots, And that for some 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:09.800 centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.640 the fountain of the Whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings, 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.760 that all this should be. And yet that down to 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:20.440 this blessed minute fifteen and a quarter minutes past one 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:24.200 o'clock pm on this sixteenth day of December eighty eighteen 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:28.640 fifty one, it should still remain a problem whether these 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:33.720 spoutings are after all really water or nothing but vapor. 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.280 This is surely a noteworthy thing. And then, skipping a 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:41.160 bit into the next paragraph, everyone knows that, by the 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:45.360 peculiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes in general 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.880 breathe the air, which at all times is combined with 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.440 the element in which they swim. Hence, a herring or 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:55.400 a cod might live a century and never once raise 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:59.200 its head above the surface. But owing to his marked 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:02.600 internal sar structure, which gives him regular lungs like a 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:06.680 human being's, the whale can only live by inhaling the 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:11.960 disengaged air in the open atmosphere, wherefore the necessity for 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:16.160 his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.320 in any degree breathe through his mouth, for in his 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.920 ordinary attitude, the sperm whale's mouth is buried at least 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:26.000 eight feet beneath the surface. And what is still more, 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:30.080 his windpipe has no connection with his mouth. No, he 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:34.040 breathes through his spiracle alone, and this is on the 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:35.040 top of his head. 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:38.040 Now, so far, so good. I mean, nothing too out 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:39.559 of whack and all that, I think. 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:43.000 Oh sure, And I think this does help give you 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:46.000 a sense of some of the wide eyed admiration and 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.600 the power of the mystery in describing whales at this 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:53.040 time when, like documentary footage was not a thing that 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.680 existed yet. You know, people couldn't like see planet Earth 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.360 and see what whales looked like. So you know, most 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.320 people probably never would have seen any whale in person. 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.000 Even if you had, you probably would have only seen them, 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.640 you know, breaching the surface occasionally or spouting from below. 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:12.240 Like you wouldn't have the kind of familiarity with whales 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:15.720 that even the average person has today just through being 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:17.760 able to see them in movies and documentaries. 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.400 Right, And of course, depending on when you're trying, you're 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.200 looking out to the ocean and potentially seeing a whale, 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.000 that their ability to see them might be greatly reduced 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:32.400 by human whaling enterprise, which you know certainly initially greatly 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:34.640 reduced the number of whales that would have been close 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.520 to shore and then eventually got into those populations that 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:38.520 were further from shore. 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:42.839 Yeah. Now, so this chapter on the fountain, on one hand, 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:45.880 it simply made me want to investigate the blowhole and 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.640 whale respiration as a subject in itself, which we will do. 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:54.319 But this chapter also raises a number of controversies and 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:58.600 Strange claims that I wanted to further investigate. One of 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:03.560 the controversies that Melville opens the chapter by acknowledging is 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.680 the question of what is the spout or what is 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:08.199 it that comes out of the spout? I guess it 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:10.800 depends on what you're using the word spout to refer 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.040 to there. But yet, what is coming out of the blowhole? 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:17.760 Is it water or is it, as Ishmael says, quote, 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:20.720 nothing but vapor. That's a question that did seem to 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.400 be a live one to some degree in Melville's day. 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.160 But also as far as Strange claims go, here's one 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:29.040 for you I want to read from later in the chapter. 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.240 Are you ready, Rob, Yes, let's have it. 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:34.440 Okay, so he says, quote, nor is it at all 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:37.560 prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching the 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:41.000 precise nature of the whale spout? It will not do 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.679 for him to be peering into it and putting his 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.760 face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:50.640 this fountain and fill it and bring it away, For 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:54.439 even when coming into slight contact with the outer vapory 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:58.079 shreds of the jet, which will often happen, your skin 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:02.440 will feverishly smart the acridness of the thing so touching it. 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:06.439 And I know one who coming into still closer contact 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.920 with the spout, whether with some scientific object in view 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:14.200 or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:18.280 his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among Whalemen the spout is 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:22.760 deemed poisonous. They try to evade it. Another thing I 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:25.240 have heard it said, and I do not much doubt 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.480 it that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes, 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:32.839 it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator can do, then, 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:39.040 it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone. Okay, 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:40.840 So I read that, and I was like, what is 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:43.680 going on here? This sounds wrong to me. But I 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.840 wonder if there's some kind of basis to it, or 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.240 some way this rumor could have gotten started that would 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.760 be identifiable. I don't know. So that's another thing I 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:58.679 want to explore. The allegedly deadly, poisonous blinding spout steals 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.600 your power of sight, melts away your flesh like xenomorph blood. 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:08.199 This is something else. This goes beyond discussions of water 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:14.560 versus mists, because this is just not true. You know, 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:17.439 we mentioned my time with my family down in Mexico 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:20.360 getting to observe the gray whales. So when we were 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.440 out there, there would often be multiple gray whales around 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.600 the boat constantly, you know, breathing close to the surface. 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:30.199 And I should point out these were casual breaths. These 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:34.959 were not breaths that were occurring after deep dive or 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:40.360 anything like that, but still pretty explosive exhalations, a lot 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.040 of mist floating around in the air. I definitely got 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:47.240 whale spout on me from these mists, and I saw 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.800 on more than one occasion somebody take a rather stiff 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:55.360 blast of the whale spout directly in the face. Now 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:57.920 I don't recall if they had sunglasses on or what, 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:01.480 but it was it was alarming, but it wasn't anything 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.760 that caused undue grief or stress. It was one of 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.640 those things you kind of laugh about afterwards. You wash 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.680 off your face. And some of my fellow whale watchers, 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:13.280 they really took it as kind of a point of pride, 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:15.079 you know, they're like, they referred to it as a 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.400 kind of baptism. You know, you're just, hey, you wanted 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:20.360 to get close to these creatures. It doesn't get a 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:21.160 lot closer than that. 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.480 But what about your skin? Did it peel off or 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:24.560 do you still have your skin on? 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.320 I still have all, I mean all my skin was 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.679 intact following each of these episodes out on the water. 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.760 People who were blasted full on in the face also 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:36.960 were fine. So yeah, I mean, the only thing that 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:38.760 comes to mind is, I guess it seems possible that 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:40.920 someone could have in some sort of an allergic reaction 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:46.240 to something in the whale spout, but I've never heard 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:47.320 this is actually occurring. 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:49.920 Yeah, it seems to be based on everything I've read 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:52.680 that You're right, I could not find any evidence that 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:56.359 what comes out of a whales blowhole is actually poisonous 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:59.000 or acrid to the point that it will will burn 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:01.960 your skin away. But we can still come back to this, 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:04.240 and I don't know, maybe at least try to investigate 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.440 anything we can figure out about the claim itself, despite 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:09.400 the fact that it seems obviously not true. 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:22.720 Right, Let's get into the basic science of whale spout 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:26.520 or whale blow. What is whale blow well? Its discussed 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:29.840 by Mark Carwadine in The Handbook of Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises, 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:32.920 an excellent book that I referred to several times in 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:36.800 our previous series on the gray whale. Whale blow or 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.320 whale spout refers to both the whales act of breathing 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:44.960 explosive exhalation followed by immediate inhalation, and also it refers 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:47.600 to the visible misty cloud that hangs in the air 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.880 afterwards quote condensed water, a fine spray of mucus from 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.720 inside the lungs, and seawater trapped in the blowholes. And 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:57.320 I think this was one of the main reasons that 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:02.280 I did take a little extra care to avoid staring 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:04.280 down over the side of the boat at a blowhole, 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:06.280 because I did not want to be sneezed full on 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:10.560 in the face by one of these these leviathans. But 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.560 I was not deathly afraid of it, and I'm fearful 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:14.640 of my sight. 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:16.960 Well sure, and you might want to avoid that, not 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:20.480 just because of the forcefulness of the blow. But for 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:22.920 another I mean one of the same reasons you wouldn't 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:25.320 want a human to sneeze in your face, which is 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:29.000 that like when somebody sneezes, that mucus might contain significant 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:31.720 loading of bacteria, and yeah, you don't know what that's 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:32.160 going to be. 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:36.080 Yeah. Yeah, so I avoided it, but I also didn't 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:38.240 feel bad about I certainly got plenty of the mist 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:40.880 on me, because if you have multiple gray whales in 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:43.440 your vicinity, you're just in a cloud of the stuff. 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.400 So it's unavoidable. Yeah, so, you know, breaking it down 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:49.120 to brass tax here the obvious whales. Of course, as 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:51.320 we've stated aquatic mammals, they have to come to the 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:54.760 surface to breathe, but hold their breath while underwater, and 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:57.600 according to Hammond at All in the book Whales Their 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:01.840 Biology and Behavior, whales consciously can they're breathing, unlike most mammals, 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:06.000 who are reflex breathers like us. They breathe through their blowholes, 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:10.520 which are sometimes called their nares, which are essentially evolved 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:15.360 nostrils which can be muscularly opened and closed, and as 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:17.640 the authors point out, quote the air pressure in the 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.880 nasal passage is higher than the ambient pressure at the surface, 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.600 leading to the explosive release of air from the blowhole. 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.880 The exhaled air from the whales inside is warmer than 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.280 the surrounding air and carries moisture, which condenses into the 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.200 visible blow that so often is the first tell tale 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.000 sign of a whale. Now, as we've discussed in the 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:41.840 show before, baileen whales have two holes, while toothed whales 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:46.119 have only one. Baileane whales also have a raised blowhole 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:50.840 with a frontal splash guard. It's the explosive exhalation and 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:54.120 quick inhalation takes a mere second in the smaller whales 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:56.640 in just a few seconds in the giant. So there's 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.320 a real economy of breathing in all of this. You know, 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.080 you come up to the surface, and contrary to a 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:05.400 lot of the he illustrations of whales, their whole head 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:08.560 does not come up. I mean, they can do some 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:10.919 of this, but it's not necessary for breathing. All they 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:12.280 have to do is just get the top of their 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:16.080 head that little blowhole above the water. To pull this 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.600 off in a manner of seconds and according to the 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:22.040 National Marine Life Center, just one exhalation pretty much empties 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:26.320 of whale's entire lungs. One of our exhalations only empties 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:27.320 part of our lungs. 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.280 Now, this is an interesting fact that I thought was 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:32.200 worth looking at a little bit deeper, this thing about 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.840 whale lungs and capacity and the extent to which that 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:39.320 capacity is used. So I started thinking about the comparison 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:45.040 to underwater breath holding in humans. Most people who have 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.879 no special training can comfortably hold their breath underwater for 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.360 about a minute. I've seen estimates ranging from like one 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.360 to two minutes to thirty to ninety seconds. I don't 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:57.840 know if that depends on how old the population you're 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.440 looking at is, or you know, how physically fit they are, 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.000 but still, you know, the average person is not going 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.040 to be able to stay under that long, maybe a 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:09.520 couple minutes. Now, with conditioning, humans can stay under water 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:11.919 a lot longer. I was actually I was trying to 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:16.560 find the current human record for underwater breath holding, and 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:20.760 according to Guinness World Records, the record holder is a 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:25.760 Croatian man named Budimir Shobot, who on March twenty seventh, 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:30.280 twenty twenty one, stayed underwater for twenty four minutes and 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:34.040 thirty seven seconds, and at first I was like, wait 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:38.359 a second, that just cannot be correct. That is too long. 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:42.399 That is more than two full playthroughs of the album 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:46.160 length version, not the single version of I'd Do Anything 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:49.879 for Love, but I won't do that. Can't imagine it. 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:55.520 And to some degree my instincts were confirmed because I 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:59.600 realized there's a big caveat here Showbot's record and many 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:02.280 other people who compete for this particular record. This was 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:09.200 for a special category of breath holding, oxygen assisted voluntary 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.560 breath holding. So in this category, before you go under 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:16.600 the water, you can spend up to thirty minutes ventilating 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:20.359 with one hundred percent pure oxygen from a tank. So 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:24.879 this is a pre dive hyper ventilation process to like 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:29.840 superoxygenate your body. Of course, one hundred percent pure oxygen's 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:32.320 much higher than the content in the air. We normally 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.520 breathe at twenty one percent oxygen. So yeah, the people 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:38.480 who do this, they are super oxygenating their body before 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:42.000 they start. And also, of course this guy was highly trained. 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:44.720 He spent more than three years training six days a week. 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:47.000 So twenty four and a half minutes is the record 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:51.919 for this technology assisted hyper ventilation category. But I was 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:55.359 trying to find the not technology assisted version, and I 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:59.040 found a twenty twenty three article by a University of 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:03.840 Windsor kinesio pologist named Anthony Bain, and he writes that 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:07.000 the record for breath holding if you don't pregame with 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:11.359 pure oxygen, is less than half that. It is possibly 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:14.159 eleven minutes and thirty five seconds for men, which is 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:17.880 a record held by Stefan Mifsud. Though there's some dispute 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:20.280 about this one because there's also a guy named Bronco 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:24.280 Petrovitch who holds a record accredited by Guinness but not 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.640 by this other organization, a governing body called the International 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:31.560 Association for the Development of Apnea, which apparently does some 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:35.320 kind of certification of these records. And I don't want 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:37.439 to get drawn into a knife fight about which record 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:42.119 is legitimate, but let's just say the unassisted record for 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:45.359 men is somewhere between the eleven to twelve minute range, 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.760 and the record for women is nine minutes and two seconds, 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:51.120 held by Natalia Mulkanova. 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:53.480 Yeah, we don't want to make any enemies of people 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:54.880 who can hold their breath this long. 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:57.760 That does sound dangerous, just as a side note speaking 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:01.320 of people who can hold their breath shockingly long time. 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.000 This article also mentioned something I hadn't heard of at all, 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:09.720 Apparently in preparation for the filming of Avatar Too, The 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:14.640 Way of Water. The actress Kate Winslet trained in underwater 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:18.000 breath holding for several weeks, and on set she was 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:22.000 able to stay underwater for more than seven minutes, something 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:24.520 that I am sure, no matter how much I trained, 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:27.120 I could not do. She did this on camera too, 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:28.560 and you can watch a video of it. When she 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:30.960 pops up at the end, she asks, am I dead? 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:32.600 So hats off to Kate. 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:33.560 Wow. 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:35.600 By the way, did you see Way of Water? I 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:36.480 haven't seen it yet. 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:40.560 I did. Yeah, My family and I just doing the holidays. 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:43.159 It was super cold. One morning we got up and 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:48.000 saw a morning showing of Avatar two, complete with coffee 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:51.360 and multiple bathroom breaks because it's super long. But yeah, 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.680 it's fun and it's got space whales in it, so 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:56.119 that's kind of neat. You know. 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.120 There are some whales that can stay underwater without breathing 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:01.119 longer than we can go in a movie without a 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:07.240 bathroom break at least finish coffee involved, Yes, but While 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.159 that is individual records, there are also there are whole 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:16.199 cultures of people who regularly do extended underwater free diving 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:19.000 and standard for a long period of time. I was 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:22.920 looking at one study quickly just to mention by Ilardo 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:26.480 at All published in the journal Cell in twenty eighteen 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:30.720 called Physiological and Genetic Adaptations to Diving in Sea Nomads. 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:36.040 And this study was examining adaptations in the Sama people 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:41.840 also known as the Bajoo, a nomadic sea living people 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:44.920 of Southeast Asia who are well known for their amazing 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:49.199 free diving skills. In some cases they spend several hours 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:52.880 a day underwater, not continuously, but they will stay under 0:22:52.920 --> 0:22:55.760 continuously for minutes at a time while free diving to 0:22:56.520 --> 0:23:00.159 retrieve things from below. And this is part of been 0:23:00.200 --> 0:23:02.640 part of their culture for thousands of years. And so 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:06.560 this study did some genomic and anatomical analysis of these 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:10.200 people to say, well, you know, the free diving skill 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:13.200