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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And Hey, as I mentioned

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Speaker 2: in yesterday's Listener Mail episode, we have got some vault

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Speaker 2: episodes for you this week. We're out a few days

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Speaker 2: this week, so we're bringing you some older episodes of

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Speaker 2: the show. This is part one of our series on

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Speaker 2: the gray whale, which originally published on March second, twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty three.

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Speaker 1: Hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. This episode

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Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and I suppose the

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Speaker 1: next one as well, we'll be dealing with gray whales.

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Speaker 1: This is a topic that I was inspired to cover

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Speaker 1: because my family was fortunate enough to get to go

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Speaker 1: on a trip to Mexico to the next state of

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Speaker 1: Baja California, sir to one of the breeding lagoons that

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Speaker 1: the gray whales migrate too every year. Specifically, we went

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Speaker 1: to Ojo de Labra lagoon that means eye of the

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Speaker 1: hair due to the way it's shaped. And yeah, I

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Speaker 1: got to see these magnificent animals close up, got to

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Speaker 1: observe them for a couple of days. It was absolutely

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Speaker 1: fantastic and certainly ignited my curiosity about these creatures.

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Speaker 2: I didn't get to see your photos because I'm not

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Speaker 2: on the Gramd, but Rachel was raving about them to me.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I will once this episode comes out off to

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Speaker 1: share some maybe in the discussion module the Facebook group

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Speaker 1: or our discord for the show, And if you don't

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Speaker 1: have access to those, just email us and we'll hook

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Speaker 1: you up. But yeah, I got some great footage, My

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Speaker 1: wife got some great footage, and more than anything, we

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Speaker 1: just got to take in this amazing location, this amazing landscape,

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Speaker 1: and and these amazing animals.

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Speaker 2: So this lagoon is one of their calving grounds, and

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Speaker 2: and you were out in boats getting to observe them

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Speaker 2: right up close, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. This this is one of several different lagoons where

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Speaker 1: where where this particular population goes to. When we were

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Speaker 1: visiting there, there were hundreds of whales present in this lagoon.

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Speaker 1: It's a pretty vast lagoon. It's surrounded on all sides

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Speaker 1: with this kind of desolate and haunting landscape that's full

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Speaker 1: of like salt, sand and bramble. I mean it's there

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Speaker 1: are there are organisms there either, coyotes around and other creatures,

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Speaker 1: but it's it's it's a unique landscape. Like just flying

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Speaker 1: into Guerera Negro, the nearest town, was was really breathtaking

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Speaker 1: just because the landscape is so beautiful. But the first

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Speaker 1: morning we went out on these boats, there were also

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Speaker 1: these intense fottamorgana mirages on the horizon that really added

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Speaker 1: to the surreal feel of the place.

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Speaker 2: What were they like images out Do they look like

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Speaker 2: mountains or.

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Speaker 1: They were the surrounding mounted like some of the peaks

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Speaker 1: that were visible on the and also some of the dunes,

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Speaker 1: so like dunes and peaks. So yeah, it was and

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Speaker 1: it looked like floating islands on the horizon. Wow. And

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Speaker 1: then of course closer in you have all of these

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Speaker 1: breaching whales and spy hopping whales and it's amazing. Now,

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Speaker 1: I do want to stress that in this particular situation,

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Speaker 1: only a few boats were permitted on the water at

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Speaker 1: a time. There was no chasing of the whales, there

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Speaker 1: was no feeding of the whales that they don't eat

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Speaker 1: while they are there. And we'll get into the reasons

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Speaker 1: for this as we move through these episodes. But there's

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Speaker 1: no need to chase and there's no need to try

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Speaker 1: and bait them in, because they're very curious. They come

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Speaker 1: up to the boats, they inspect the boats, and sometimes

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Speaker 1: they're obviously scraping their skin against the holes of the boats,

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Speaker 1: perhaps to relieve themselves some of the parasites that they have,

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Speaker 1: the exo parasites, and we'll discuss that as well, probably

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Speaker 1: well in this episode. Actually, other times, though they're not

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Speaker 1: scraping against the boats. Sometimes they're just kind of pushing

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Speaker 1: them around a little bit, like playing with them, I guess,

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Speaker 1: to try and figure out what their mind might be.

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Speaker 1: Other times they're just kind of breaching a little bit.

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Speaker 1: They're spy hopping, and they seem to have some sort

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Speaker 1: of interest in what's going on in the boats or

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Speaker 1: with the boats. Humans will reach out and touch them,

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Speaker 1: and it seems like the whales like this on some level.

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Speaker 1: It's a very very very strange situation, Like it feels

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Speaker 1: kind of like certainly there's a sense of curiosity on

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Speaker 1: both sides, but there's also this, you know, if you

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Speaker 1: want to get spiritual about it, there's almost this feeling

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Speaker 1: of communion.

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Speaker 2: So sometimes they'll kind of bring part of their body

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Speaker 2: out of the water or breach. But also you said

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Speaker 2: spy hopping is that when they raise their eyes above

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Speaker 2: the water level to see what's above the surface.

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Speaker 1: Well, in other species such as the orca, there's there's

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Speaker 1: definitely more of an eye coming above the water with

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Speaker 1: the with the gray whales, they're not even necessarily getting

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Speaker 1: their eyes above water. So it's uh, and I think

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Speaker 1: it's there. There's some different takes on why exactly they're

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Speaker 1: doing this, but they'll, yeah, they'll kind of spy hop

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Speaker 1: next to the boat, and they're spy hopping out further

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Speaker 1: away from the boats as well. And and then yeah,

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Speaker 1: sometimes they're rolling around in the water and kind of

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Speaker 1: and you'll even like look into their eye that sometimes

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Speaker 1: they are looking up through the water at you. And

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Speaker 1: that's one of those moments where you're just you know,

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Speaker 1: you're you're thinking about like what are they seeing? What

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Speaker 1: are they possibly thinking as they look up at us,

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Speaker 1: what do they think we are? And then you also

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Speaker 1: look at this whale and you just, man, I was

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Speaker 1: just thinking, like they've they've seen things I can't even imagine,

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Speaker 1: you know, And this this particular whale is going to

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Speaker 1: see things just in the months ahead that that I

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Speaker 1: can scarcely imagine.

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Speaker 2: So I'm very us of this experience, and I would

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Speaker 2: love to see gray whales up close one day too.

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Speaker 2: But I have seen plenty of video footage, and at

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Speaker 2: least from what I've seen, several things stand out. One

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Speaker 2: that they kind of I don't know if this makes

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Speaker 2: any sense, but they look more like rocks than any

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Speaker 2: other type of whale I can think of having seen,

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Speaker 2: and that may be aided by the many barnacles attached

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Speaker 2: to the outside of them, which is we'll talk about

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Speaker 2: later on, are very characteristic of the species of whale,

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Speaker 2: having a lot of barnacle loading on the outside, But

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Speaker 2: in looking at them, they can look very much like

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Speaker 2: a large gray boulder covered in lichen, almost where the

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Speaker 2: barnacles are kind of like the lichen patches, or at

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Speaker 2: least it seemed that way to me. And then the

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Speaker 2: other thing being that their nostrils look more typically mammalian

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Speaker 2: rather than the blowhole that you would see on the

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Speaker 2: back of a lot of whales, where you might perceive

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Speaker 2: at least as a single blowhole. Uh, the gray whale

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Speaker 2: nostrils I recall seeing are very distinctly separate nostrils. They

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Speaker 2: kind of flare more like a dog's nostrils might.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, this this is not your your cartoon whale.

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Speaker 1: Uh yeah. You have those those very nostril like blowholes

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Speaker 1: on top of the head. And you if you're if

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Speaker 1: you're out on one of these lagoons, you see see

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Speaker 1: them a lot. In fact, a lot of people end

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Speaker 1: up getting spra You're constantly misted by the spray from them,

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Speaker 1: even if they're not super close to the boats. Uh,

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Speaker 1: just because you know they're they're just coming up. They're

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Speaker 1: they're blowing that blowhole. There's this mist in the air

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Speaker 1: of water, and also I guess probably some some whale

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Speaker 1: snut in there as well. But they do have to

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Speaker 1: your point, they do have this kind of rocky appearance.

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Speaker 1: Part of it's the barnacle load, but also that their

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Speaker 1: their their skin is very modeled and and scarred and

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Speaker 1: and it it could look like it is it is stone.

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Speaker 1: When if you do touch it, I thought that it

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Speaker 1: felt more or less like a big egg plant. That's

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Speaker 1: the kind of feeling I had from it, Like there's

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Speaker 1: a little like there's a softness to it, but there

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Speaker 1: is also you know, it's like a that's kind of

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Speaker 1: wet suit feeling as well. Another thing about their skin

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Speaker 1: is I and we'll come back to this, but I

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Speaker 1: was surprised by their whiskers. We've talked on the show

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Speaker 1: before about the evolution of whales and the loss of

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Speaker 1: body hair, so I wasn't prepared for the whiskers. Somehow

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Speaker 1: I missed this leading up to this whale experience, but

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Speaker 1: they have quite a few whiskers. The other thing that

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Speaker 1: I was surprised about because on some level I was

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Speaker 1: prepared for this gentleness, so I was prepared for this curiosity.

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Speaker 1: I knew what I was getting into with that. But

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Speaker 1: also you would see them moving underneath the water, and

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Speaker 1: these are big animals. There were talking fourteen point nine

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Speaker 1: meters or forty nine feet in length, weights of up

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Speaker 1: to forty one tons or so. So these are like

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Speaker 1: school bus sized organisms, and they're often very curious and

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Speaker 1: gentle next to the boat, but they can move with

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Speaker 1: such speed and strength, and you see that occasionally, especially

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Speaker 1: when they're engaging in mating behavior further away from the boats.

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Speaker 1: They'll they'll surge underneath the water and you're reminded just

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Speaker 1: how powerful and how potentially destructive these creatures are if

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Speaker 1: they had if they had reason to be destructive towards you.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. This reminds me of all these

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Speaker 2: passages in Moby Dick describing whales. We know now from

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Speaker 2: plenty of examples like this. Just like as a matter

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Speaker 2: of habit do not seem to attack humans or do

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Speaker 2: anything very aggressive, at least not most of the time,

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Speaker 2: but described in these older documents with absolute horror, just

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Speaker 2: like these whales are monsters. They are killers. They will

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Speaker 2: crush you, they will swallow you whole.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And in fact I ran across this wonderful description.

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Speaker 1: This is This is from a paper in The American

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Speaker 1: Naturalist from eighteen eighty eight by J. D. Catton, titled

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Speaker 1: the California gray Whale. The author writes, quote, of all

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Speaker 1: the known species of whales, this is the most cunning, courageous,

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Speaker 1: and vicious. So terrible is it that, with the old

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Speaker 1: implements of harpoon and lance, but few whalemen would court

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Speaker 1: an encounter with it, and it early received the name

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Speaker 1: of the devilfish. I have no account that it ever

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Speaker 1: maliciously attacked an unoffending object, yet when it found itself

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Speaker 1: pursued where escape was difficult, even before it was struck,

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Speaker 1: it has been known to turn upon pursuers and dash

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Speaker 1: a boat to fragments with a single blow of its

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Speaker 1: powerful flukes. And so has many a life been lost?

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Speaker 2: Okay, well, at least this source acknowledges that this kind

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Speaker 2: of behavior would be like in response to extreme distress,

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Speaker 2: like when the whale is being attacked.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he is acknowledging that this is aggression that's

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Speaker 1: coming out of obvious whaling scenario. And you know, the

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Speaker 1: sad fact is, and we've touched on this in the

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Speaker 1: show before, you can't you can't remove whaling from our

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Speaker 1: understanding of these creatures. I mean, the history is intertwined

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Speaker 1: there with our understanding of the organism, and so we

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Speaker 1: have various things where the name comes from whaler observations, like,

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Speaker 1: for instance, whale lice, which we'll discuss. They're not actually lies,

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Speaker 1: but whalers compare them to lies, and that's where the

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Speaker 1: name comes from.

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Speaker 2: I do believe grey whales specifically are thought to have

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Speaker 2: once been much more abundant, right, but that whaling in

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Speaker 2: particular reduced their populations to present levels where there's a

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Speaker 2: sustainable number of grey whales in the population on the

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Speaker 2: western coast of the American continent, but the population that

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Speaker 2: lives on the other side of the Pacific, on the

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Speaker 2: eastern coast of the Asian mainland is much more reduced,

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Speaker 2: but in both cases reduced by whaling.

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Speaker 1: And then there was once a North Atlantic grey whale population.

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Speaker 1: These were thought to have fed around Newfoundland, the Gulf

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Speaker 1: of Saint Lawrence, Iceland, and Europe's North Sea and for

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Speaker 1: their winter breeding lagoons or refuges. It's thought that they

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Speaker 1: might have visited the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas

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Speaker 1: here in the States, as well as uncertain spots along

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Speaker 1: the coast of Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. But this population

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Speaker 1: was essentially extinct by the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,

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Speaker 1: do at least in part to whaling. Interestingly enough, there

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Speaker 1: have been proposals to try and introduce reintroduce the North

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Speaker 1: Pacific gray whale into this region to restore the population.

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Speaker 1: And I've also seen speculations about what might occur in

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Speaker 1: the future due to climate change, that as we have

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Speaker 1: less sea ice, it might enable the gray whales on

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Speaker 1: their own to recolonize this part of the ocean.

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Speaker 2: I guess it would be very difficult and expensive to

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Speaker 2: try to force a recolonization by human intervention.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean nothing else. We're talking about enormous

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Speaker 1: creatures and how are you going to get them there?

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Speaker 1: I didn't look super hard at the proposals. They may

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Speaker 1: have a very straightforward solution to this. I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: if they would be airlifting them or shipping them across

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Speaker 1: land or exactly what the scenario is, but it has

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Speaker 1: not become an actionable thing at least yet. Well, let's

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Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the physical characteristics of

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Speaker 1: the gray whale here. Because I guess we are an

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Speaker 1: audio program. You can certainly look up lots of great

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Speaker 1: images and footage and illustrations. One of the books that

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Speaker 1: was one of my prime sources here as a book

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Speaker 1: by Mark Carwoodine The Handbook of Wales, Dolphins and Porpoises

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Speaker 1: of the World. Highly recommend this book for anyone out

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Speaker 1: there who's into Wales, dolphins and porposes. Fabulous illustrations and

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Speaker 1: some great photographs and just lots of wonderful information that

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Speaker 1: you know can aid you just sort of in general

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Speaker 1: general interest in these organisms, or if you're into citing

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Speaker 1: them and has you know how to pick out these

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Speaker 1: various creatures by their markings, by their spouts, by their flukes,

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Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So that's going to be one

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Speaker 1: of the books I'm going to keep referring back to,

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Speaker 1: for sure. But getting back to what we were talking

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Speaker 1: about earlier. Yes, these are whales. These are large creatures,

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Speaker 1: large whales by some rakings, I think they're only the

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Speaker 1: eighth largest whale species. But considering that number one, the

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Speaker 1: blue whale, is the largest animal that's ever lived, there's

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Speaker 1: not really no shame in coming at number eight. Gray

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Speaker 1: whale can reach forty nine feet in length. That's the

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Speaker 1: fourteen point nine meters way about forty tons. The females

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Speaker 1: are larger than the males, and even the newborns are

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Speaker 1: approximately fourteen to sixteen feet long. It's roughly four point

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Speaker 1: two to four point eight meters and weigh around two

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Speaker 1: thousand pounds or around nine hundred and seven kilogram. So

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Speaker 1: we're talking about big reachers here. Cannot stress that.

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Speaker 2: Enough, And I guess it's helpful that the newborn calves

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Speaker 2: are already big, because it's when a whale is young

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Speaker 2: that it's most susceptible to predators, like the predation on

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Speaker 2: adult gray whales, from what I understand, is pretty rare,

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Speaker 2: whereas attempts by animals such as orches to prey on

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Speaker 2: the calves is pretty common.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, because a healthy adult whale is a healthy

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Speaker 1: adult gray whale is a formidable opponent unless conditions are

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Speaker 1: just right. And then of course the young are going

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Speaker 1: to be the primary focal point of predators. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: we've established their big we should also come back to

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Speaker 1: the fact that, yes, they are more or less gray

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Speaker 1: in color.

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Speaker 2: Often look like just a big old slab of granite,

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Speaker 2: kind of like an obelisk in the water.

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Speaker 1: Yes. Now, one initial question that came up for me,

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Speaker 1: of course, especially as we were dealing in our notes here,

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Speaker 1: was is it gray g R E y or is

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Speaker 1: it g R A y.

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Speaker 2: I generally assume those spellings are interchangeable. It's like American

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Speaker 2: English or British English.

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Speaker 1: That's how I, yeah read it. Yeah, and that's one

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Speaker 1: of the main distinctions. Mark Cardawine in his book stresses

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Speaker 1: that either is correct. You know, obviously g R E

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Speaker 1: Y is more common in British English, and g R

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Speaker 1: a y is more common in American English, and generally

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Speaker 1: we're referring to what is perceived to be the color

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Speaker 1: of the creature, though much of its gray appearance is

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Speaker 1: due to those accumulated barnacles, skin lesions scarring their actual skin,

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Speaker 1: though is still often described as light to dark gray,

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Speaker 1: or maybe a gray brown. However, it's also acceptable to

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Speaker 1: consider that we dub them gray whales in reference to

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Speaker 1: British zoologist John Edward gray Gry who lived eighteen one

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Speaker 1: hundred through eighteen seventy five, who placed the whale in

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Speaker 1: its own genus in eighteen sixty four. On top of that,

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Speaker 1: its scientific name is as Richtius robustus, referring to nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century Danish zoologist Frederick Eschricht who lived seventeen ninety eight

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Speaker 1: through eighteen sixty three.

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Speaker 2: So it could have been the esh Richt whale. We're

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Speaker 2: glad that it's the grey whale.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it rolls off the tongue for us at

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00:17:26,359 --> 00:17:29,880
Speaker 1: any rate a little easier. It's been known by other names,

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Speaker 1: of course, the gray back, the muscle digger, the mud digger,

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Speaker 1: the scrag whale, ripsack hard head, and of course by

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Speaker 1: American whalers, the devilfish that was.

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Speaker 2: The one referenced in that they quote from the article

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Speaker 2: in the American Naturalists from the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: Correct. Yes, now there are no recognized forms or subspecies,

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Speaker 1: though there are two possible sub populations according to Carwoodine,

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Speaker 1: so we have the eastern North Pacific and the western

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Speaker 1: North Pacific grey whale. But there also seems to be

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Speaker 1: some cross breeding between these two populations in the Mexican lagoons.

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Speaker 1: Now again you can put all of your sort of

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Speaker 1: cartoon whale appearances to the side, because the reality is

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Speaker 1: somewhat different, not only with the blowholes, but for starters,

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Speaker 1: we should point out that this is a bleen whale,

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Speaker 1: not a toothed whale. Baleen whales were once toothed whales

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Speaker 1: earlier on in their evolution, and we do have fossil

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Speaker 1: evidence of whales with both teeth and bleen, but they

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Speaker 1: have adapted. The gray whales have adapted to thrive as

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Speaker 1: pure filter feeders.

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Speaker 2: So the balene is a bristly material that lives inside

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Speaker 2: the whale's mouth which they use to filter feed by. Well,

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Speaker 2: there are various different ways that different species do it,

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Speaker 2: but by forcing water through these sort of sieves, natural

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Speaker 2: biological sieves, the baileen hairs, which capture the plankton or

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Speaker 2: the krill, or the small bits of organic matter that

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Speaker 2: the whales live on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and it's like these keratin balen plates. And

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Speaker 1: this is something I hadn't given a lot of thought

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Speaker 1: to before. But there are different strategies to use with

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Speaker 1: your bayleen. There are two main strategies. Two of the

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Speaker 1: main strategies anywhere are gulping and straining, both carried out

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Speaker 1: near the water's surface by different species of whales. Baileen whales,

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Speaker 1: like right whales, will swim through clouds of krill open mouth,

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Speaker 1: skimming them from the water. Meanwhile, fin whales gulp up

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Speaker 1: water full of fish and or krill and then push

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Speaker 1: the water out as if through a sieve. But the

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Speaker 1: gray whales are different. They're the only modern balen whale

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Speaker 1: that dives down deep, and I mean this is deep

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Speaker 1: relative to the waters they inhabit. These are not deep

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Speaker 1: water whales. They're not like sperm whales. They tend to

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Speaker 1: stick to coastal regions in the continental shelf, but they'll

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Speaker 1: go down deep for these regions, and they'll feed as

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Speaker 1: bottom feeders. They'll turn on one side, and interestingly they

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Speaker 1: are there is like a right handedness to the gray whales.

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Speaker 1: Most whales seem to favor their right side, but some

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Speaker 1: do left instead, and they'll vacuum the water up, vacuum

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Speaker 1: up water, mud, sand, and most importantly various organisms there

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Speaker 1: in the muck. And then they'll use their tongue to

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Speaker 1: push out the mud, sand and water.

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Speaker 2: But retain all these little organisms and things they can

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Speaker 2: digest in their billien.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's interesting apparently you can tell which side

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Speaker 1: a particular grey whale favors because the side it favors

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Speaker 1: is generally more scraped up and debarnicled, because that's the

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Speaker 1: side that goes down in plows into the ocean floor.

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Speaker 1: And also there bayleen plates are shorter than in other

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Speaker 1: extant whales. So these other bayleen whales that use different

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Speaker 1: feeding techniques, I think they tend to have longer baileen

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Speaker 1: for straining out the things that they need to eat. Now,

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Speaker 1: as for what they're eating out of the muck, Carbeting

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Speaker 1: points out that a good eighty species of fish and

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Speaker 1: invertebrates have been identified as gray whale prey. However, most

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Speaker 1: of the prey that they consume consists of benthic and

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Speaker 1: planktonic organisms. Planktonic meaning, of course, plankton and benthic organisms

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Speaker 1: being various isopods that live abundantly in the sand. Apparently

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Speaker 1: benthic amphipods make up a good ninety percent of their diet.

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Speaker 1: But they're they're reasonably opportunistic and may also be shifting

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Speaker 1: their foraging habits in Arctic waters due to climate change.

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Speaker 1: So basically, my understanding based on the reading here is

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Speaker 1: like they're going down to the mud and the muck

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Speaker 1: and the sand to get most of their food, but

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Speaker 1: if they happen to encounter some sort of plankton on

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Speaker 1: the way up, you know they're going to breathe it in.

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Speaker 1: They're going to go ahead and take that in as well.

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Speaker 1: They're typically diving down thirty to sixty meters, but they

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Speaker 1: may go up to one hundred and twenty or even

385
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Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy, and again, opportunistic feeding may happen

386
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Speaker 1: at any depth, but the seabed is their main target now.

387
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Speaker 1: The summer is their prime feeding period, and of course

388
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Speaker 1: they're large whales they're eating large meals. They'll eat anywhere

389
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Speaker 1: from like one to one point three tons of the

390
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:09,280
Speaker 1: stuff per day, and the remainder of the year entails

391
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Speaker 1: a lot of fasting, including their migrations too, and from

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Speaker 1: these calving and mating lagoons.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so they typically are going to be stocking up

394
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Speaker 2: on food. They're eating, they're banging their heads into the

395
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Speaker 2: sediment up in the Arctic waters, and then they migrate

396
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Speaker 2: down south for calving and rearing young.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, so you might think of them

398
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Speaker 1: as just this kind of enormous freight train of a

399
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:41,639
Speaker 1: creature that sucks up mud and anything in the mud

400
00:22:41,760 --> 00:22:46,240
Speaker 1: and the sand from the waters that they inhabit and

401
00:22:46,640 --> 00:22:49,600
Speaker 1: just eat all summer long and then go south through

402
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Speaker 1: the winter.

403
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Speaker 2: Kind of the catfish of whales.

404
00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:55,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are. I thought about this as well. Yeah,

405
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:57,679
Speaker 1: they're kind of because the catfish for the bottom feeders

406
00:22:57,880 --> 00:23:01,280
Speaker 1: I grew up around and grew period about, and so yeah,

407
00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:03,600
Speaker 1: they're kind of using the catfish strategy, but on an

408
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Speaker 1: epic scale.

409
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Speaker 2: But don't try to go noodling for gray whales.

410
00:23:07,520 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 1: No, No, that doesn't sound like a good idea now,

411
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,120
Speaker 1: oncemall note I think I did read that there are

412
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Speaker 1: some accepts. There seems to be some evidence that there

413
00:23:14,520 --> 00:23:16,720
Speaker 1: are some whales that stay north through an extended period

414
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Speaker 1: of time, but in general we see this migration occurring.

415
00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:23,919
Speaker 1: Other important physical notes, just to describe them, they have

416
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:28,040
Speaker 1: slender and small heads even in relation to their body size,

417
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:31,320
Speaker 1: certainly when you compare them to famously big headed whales

418
00:23:31,359 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: like the sperm whale, a toothed whale. They have a

419
00:23:33,800 --> 00:23:36,160
Speaker 1: stocky body with a hump two thirds of the way

420
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:39,680
Speaker 1: down their back, along with eight to fourteen quote unquote knuckles.

421
00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:42,600
Speaker 1: Further down. They don't have a dorsal fin. They just

422
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:45,719
Speaker 1: have a small hump. And like I mentioned earlier, they

423
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Speaker 1: have whiskers, and apparently they have more whiskers than any

424
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Speaker 1: other whale. I was not prepared for this, but the

425
00:23:53,119 --> 00:23:55,880
Speaker 1: whiskers are very prominent, and I was reading about this

426
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Speaker 1: on the NOAA website and they point out that these

427
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:02,320
Speaker 1: are more or less like the whiskers you'd encounter on

428
00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 1: any mammal. They are tactile sensors. Now, Carboning notes that

429
00:24:07,359 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 1: in the older whales, though many of these whiskers are

430
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Speaker 1: quote unquote obliterated by scarring and barnacles.

431
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:17,000
Speaker 2: However, oh, if the barnacles are in some cases obliterating

432
00:24:17,080 --> 00:24:21,080
Speaker 2: their sensory organs, I feel like that offers some input

433
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:24,080
Speaker 2: on question we're going to address in a minute, which

434
00:24:24,119 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 2: is about these barnacles. Now, we mentioned them earlier, but

435
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:31,560
Speaker 2: they're a very clear feature that people notice when they

436
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 2: look at gray whales. It looks horrible. Some people think,

437
00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:35,840
Speaker 2: you know, they look at this and they're like, oh

438
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:39,359
Speaker 2: my god, these poor whales. This must be a purely

439
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 2: parasitic infestation where the whale is dying because of all

440
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:46,479
Speaker 2: these barnacles on it. I think it's more of an

441
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:51,880
Speaker 2: open question exactly what the symbiotic relationship between the whales

442
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 2: and their barnacles is. Is it parasitism, is it mutualism?

443
00:24:56,880 --> 00:25:00,200
Speaker 2: Is it a commensalism? Commensalism where the barnacle would get

444
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 2: a benefit, but it just doesn't really matter to the whale.

445
00:25:02,600 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 2: We're gonna address that in a minute.

446
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I know some of you might be thinking like,

447
00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 1: I just want to hear about the grey whales. I

448
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:10,320
Speaker 1: don't want to hear about the barnacles. I don't want

449
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 1: to hear about the orca. But but here's the thing.

450
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:16,200
Speaker 1: You can't talk about the gray whale without talking about

451
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 1: the orca, which we'll probably get into more in the

452
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: second episode. And you can't talk about them without talking

453
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:22,719
Speaker 1: about their barnacles because they're just so so much a

454
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:25,359
Speaker 1: part of who they are and when what they look like.

455
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: Now there again, there may be, like you said, there

456
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:30,439
Speaker 1: may be a little more nuance to exactly what the

457
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:34,720
Speaker 1: relationship might be between the barnacles and the whale lice

458
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:38,160
Speaker 1: and the whales, but for the most part, they're often

459
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:40,720
Speaker 1: referred to as exo parasites, so we're gonna probably keep

460
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: using that term, even if we're going to, you know,

461
00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:46,160
Speaker 1: put an asterisk by it and come back to it.

462
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:50,359
Speaker 1: They do have quite an exo parasite load, and newborns

463
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:54,800
Speaker 1: are born without any barnacles, without any lice. They're an

464
00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:58,800
Speaker 1: almost uniform dark gray, almost black color, so aside from

465
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:01,120
Speaker 1: being smaller, you can definitely identify them in the water

466
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 1: based on their coloration. But they swiftly obtain these parasites

467
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:09,119
Speaker 1: as well. In addition to of course scarring from not

468
00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 1: only the parasites but also from threats and feeding. It

469
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 1: gives them a very highly variable appearance, and by feeding

470
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:21,480
Speaker 1: I mean their own feeding, going down and scraping themselves

471
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:33,560
Speaker 1: against the bottom of the sea floor. Before we get

472
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:36,040
Speaker 1: into the barnacle, though, I want to talk just a

473
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: little bit about the whale lice, because this is all

474
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 1: part of the exoparasite load, which, according to to Carwodine,

475
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:45,880
Speaker 1: adult gray whales carry more exo parasites than any other

476
00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: whale species on average, more than one hundred and eighty

477
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:52,479
Speaker 1: kilograms or three hundred and ninety six pounds of the stuff.

478
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 2: So they got a lot living on them.

479
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:57,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I didn't do a breakdown of like how

480
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:00,879
Speaker 1: that would that sort of pair site load would be

481
00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: like for the human body. But I think a lot

482
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:10,240
Speaker 1: of our repulsion to barnacles and these rather large whale

483
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,280
Speaker 1: life is that we think about our cells, we think

484
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:17,359
Speaker 1: about our pets, and if those were on us, obviously

485
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:19,120
Speaker 1: we would want them removed pronto.

486
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 2: Hold on, rob, I just tried to do the math

487
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:25,760
Speaker 2: on the loading of the barnacles and whale license stuff

488
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 2: by weight. So if we're saying that adult gray whales

489
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 2: can grow up to about forty tons, which is eighty

490
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 2: thousand pounds, and then you compare that to you said

491
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:37,720
Speaker 2: they could have up to what like almost four hundred

492
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:42,639
Speaker 2: pounds of loading of bartaicles and stuff. That is about

493
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:45,439
Speaker 2: half a percent of the body weight. So if you

494
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 2: translate that to a human I don't know human, somebody

495
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:51,080
Speaker 2: weighs one hundred and fifty pounds, what's half of one

496
00:27:51,119 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 2: percent of that body weight on the outside of them? Oh,

497
00:27:54,280 --> 00:27:56,640
Speaker 2: I don't know. It is having like, you know, three

498
00:27:56,680 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 2: quarters of a pound of parasites on the outside view

499
00:27:59,160 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 2: that bad.

500
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:02,240
Speaker 1: I don't know how many barnacles would that be. I

501
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:05,680
Speaker 1: don't know. Let's say it's one barnacle which you put

502
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:05,919
Speaker 1: up with.

503
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 2: That's way more than one barnacle's that's a number of barnacles.

504
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:11,640
Speaker 1: Well, I'm being generous here, let's go ahead and pay

505
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: it down to just one, maybe two barnacles. I feel

506
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:16,360
Speaker 1: like that would still feel like one or two barnacles

507
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 1: too many for us. But then again, we don't live

508
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:22,119
Speaker 1: in the ocean. We don't have barnacles, so it's not

509
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: appropriate for us to really make judgment calls like this.

510
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, apologies for the rough math. I may have

511
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:29,639
Speaker 2: screwed something up there, but I tried.

512
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: Now I think you captured the general feel of it,

513
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 1: because again, we have to think about just how big

514
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:37,480
Speaker 1: these creatures are. And as we're probably get to do,

515
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 1: the barnacles are not covering them head to toe. It's

516
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: not like a suit of barnacles. They tend to be

517
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 1: clusters in certain places like top of the head, right

518
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 1: behind the head and other places.

519
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they got patches, little colonies.

520
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. They have to keep a low profile to

521
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,000
Speaker 1: keep from being pulled off by the water. Though again

522
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 1: they'll they'll often scrape against things, and I'm off the

523
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: top of my head, I'm not sure if they're necessarily

524
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: scratching to remove themselves, remove the barnacles from their body,

525
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 1: or if they're dealing with like general skin discomfort or

526
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:11,040
Speaker 1: it has to do with the lice, et cetera. But

527
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: they end up scraping off the barnacles. Anyway, the one

528
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: whale that we saw scraping against the bottom of the boat,

529
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: there would be this colossal scraping sound and then like

530
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: a cloud of pieces of barnacle, and like I guess,

531
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: maybe some dried skin and probably some loose whale lice

532
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: would come floating up through the water.

533
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 2: That is gross. But to remind again you said earlier,

534
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 2: I think you said that the lice on these whale

535
00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 2: are not actually lice in the sense that we usually mean,

536
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 2: like the parasitic insects that can be found on land mammals.

537
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,840
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, we call them lies because whalers saw them

538
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:50,000
Speaker 1: on the bodies of the whales they were slaughtering, and

539
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: they just made the you know, I guess a natural

540
00:29:52,800 --> 00:29:56,400
Speaker 1: comparison to be made to lice that occur on human bodies,

541
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, well, those are whale lice, but

542
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 1: they're not lice. There actually a type of crustacean that's

543
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 1: related more to the skeleton shrimp, an organism we've talked

544
00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 1: about on the show before.

545
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 2: So what are the so called lice doing on these whales?

546
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 1: Okay, So, if you pick up Carbadine's book, and again

547
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:17,640
Speaker 1: I recommend it for whale fans out there, he has

548
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: illustrations of all four species of whale lies that you'll

549
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: find on the gray whale. Three of them are only

550
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: found on gray whales, and then there's another variety that

551
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: is found on grey whales and bowhead whales. But yeah,

552
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: there are these. They get kind of big. They can

553
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: be anywhere between three and thirty millimeters long. So at

554
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:41,960
Speaker 1: the largest a little over an inch. A lot of

555
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: the photographs you see of the barnacles on the bodies

556
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: of grey whales, you can also see the lice clustered

557
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 1: around them. They have this kind of the kind of

558
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 1: like these kind of ridges on their bodies, though they

559
00:30:55,680 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: may not be moving during the footage, and they live

560
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: in populations up to seventy five hundred on a single whale,

561
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: and they generally live and die on the same whale,

562
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 1: though there is some degree of transference that takes place

563
00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:12,280
Speaker 1: when the whales are in close confines with each other.

564
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: But they have no free swimming stage in their development,

565
00:31:15,360 --> 00:31:19,080
Speaker 1: no stage in their development at which they're swimming free,

566
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,640
Speaker 1: and they're running across other whales. If they're gonna jump ship,

567
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 1: they've got to like jump ship straight to another whale. Yeah,

568
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: but all this, like the branding of whale lies, it

569
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 1: just made me sort of automatically assume, well, they're drinking

570
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 1: whale blood, clearly, that's what they're doing, but that's not

571
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:39,640
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Carbodin notes that they don't drink blood.

572
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: They eat whale skin that's come off just you know,

573
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: like old essentially like eating dry skin, except in the water.

574
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: They're possibly eating a little bit of bacteria and algae

575
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 1: as well, and they'll also eat damage tissue, so, Carbodine writes, quote,

576
00:31:56,920 --> 00:32:00,840
Speaker 1: though usually considered parasites, they might be more accurately described

577
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: as cleaning symbians.

578
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,080
Speaker 2: Also maybe providing a benefit to the whale.

579
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Now it's still worth noting that if there

580
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:12,560
Speaker 1: is an excessively large population, that might be an indicator

581
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,240
Speaker 1: of poor health for an individual whale. But you know

582
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:19,440
Speaker 1: that's you know, obviously, if an organism is in poor health,

583
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:20,840
Speaker 1: a lot of things are going to be out of whack,

584
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 1: including the amount of creatures living on its hide.

585
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's true for organisms living on and in

586
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 2: all kinds of other larger organisms. It's true for us,

587
00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 2: like our gut microbiome is useful to us. All of

588
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:38,560
Speaker 2: those bacteria in our guts are helpful. But if there

589
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 2: something goes wrong with our immune system, they can turn opportunistic.

590
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Now, coming back to the barnacles, Carbodine notes that quote.

591
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 1: The barnacles are thought to be host specific to gray whales,

592
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: though there are isolated examples on captive bottlenosed dolphins and

593
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: beluga whales and one wild killer whale and their life

594
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:03,280
Speaker 1: cycle is synchronous with that of their hosts. And he

595
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: knowes elsewhere that there are four species of whale acorn

596
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 1: barnacles in general, in three genera, but we're talking about

597
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 1: one particular species of acorn barnacle that is found on

598
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,960
Speaker 1: the skin of the gray whale, and that is Cryptolepis ratchionecti.

599
00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: Sorry barnacles if I butchered your scientific name a little

600
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: bit there. Joe, you were kind enough to include a

601
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: lot of close up images of ant of acorn barnacles

602
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: in our notes here. Would you describe these for the listeners?

603
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 2: Well, different barnacles have different outer appearances, and I guess

604
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 2: this is because barnacles, much like coral, they are small

605
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 2: marine invertebrates, but they are perhaps most visually notable for

606
00:33:56,240 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 2: the external mineral structures that they build, and those ructures

607
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 2: can sometimes be confused with the flesh of the animals themselves.

608
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 2: But barnacles are actually crustaceans, so they are closely related

609
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 2: to animals like shrimp and crabs. And when you've seen

610
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 2: barnacles in the past, probably the main thing you've noticed

611
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:18,840
Speaker 2: are these external plates, which are made of calcium carbonate.

612
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 2: They're made of the same material as eggshells or oyster

613
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:27,280
Speaker 2: shells or coral skeletons and so forth, and in barnacles,

614
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 2: these calcium carbonate plates can have different appearances. Some kind

615
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 2: of like flower buds made out of stone, or some

616
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 2: look like cement pumpkins. Some look like tiny volcano calderas.

617
00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 2: If you zoom way out, some of the colonies look

618
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 2: as I mentioned earlier, kind of like you know, groupings

619
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:47,319
Speaker 2: of lichen on a piece of granite. But if you

620
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:49,600
Speaker 2: zoom in and you see the shapes and you see

621
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:51,800
Speaker 2: the kind of holes at the top of each barnacle,

622
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:55,960
Speaker 2: they also kind of resemble the photos that people freak

623
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:58,319
Speaker 2: out about online. And I'm never sure how much of

624
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 2: this freak out is kind of performative ironic thing, but

625
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,240
Speaker 2: about like trip to phobia images, you know, the lotus

626
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:08,640
Speaker 2: pod thing. I don't share this reaction, but while reading

627
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 2: about barnacles, I came to glean that some people are

628
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 2: deeply viscerally repulsed by the appearance of them. And I

629
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 2: didn't even know if I was gonna mention this, but

630
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 2: I was seeing a couple of cases where there'd be

631
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 2: like an article on the internet about barnacles or that

632
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 2: featured pictures of barnacles. Then you scroll down you look

633
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:31,880
Speaker 2: at the comments, and some people are reacting not just

634
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:34,160
Speaker 2: with disgust, I mean, there is plenty of that, but

635
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:38,360
Speaker 2: with like moral outrage at the author for posting these pictures,

636
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:42,160
Speaker 2: like you did something bad by showing me barnacles. I

637
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:45,799
Speaker 2: don't quite get that, but I think it may overlap

638
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:49,239
Speaker 2: with the triptophobia thing, which, as I said a minute ago,

639
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 2: I still am not sure how much of that is

640
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 2: kind of like the creepy clown thing, like like I

641
00:35:54,200 --> 00:35:57,200
Speaker 2: fear that people are playing up on purpose to be funny,

642
00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 2: or how much like their moral rage is just like

643
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 2: a genuine emotional overload reaction.

644
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure either, but I will say that,

645
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:11,919
Speaker 1: you know, with the particularly with the acorn barnacles here,

646
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 1: they look a lot to me like the eye of sauron.

647
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: They have that kind of appearance, so there's something a

648
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:23,520
Speaker 1: little unnerving about them. Also, I think it's one thing

649
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 1: to see barnacles like this on say the hull of

650
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:28,680
Speaker 1: a ship, or you know, barnacles of another variety, but

651
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:31,719
Speaker 1: when they're on a living organism, I think maybe there's

652
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: sometimes sort of category confusion going on, and particularly with

653
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 1: these sort of round aperture appearing barnacles. I think our

654
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 1: minds instantly go to poor anomalies. We think of like

655
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:48,720
Speaker 1: clogged pores, we think of pimples, we think of various

656
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 1: openings that may occur in diseased flesh, and that's maybe

657
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:57,239
Speaker 1: where our mind goes, like, that's the nearest analogy that

658
00:36:57,280 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 1: we have as surface dwellers and uh, and so we

659
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 1: we think about all that when we see barnacles on,

660
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:04,760
Speaker 1: say a whale.

661
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:08,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can understand that, and I certainly share that

662
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:11,400
Speaker 2: I react differently when I see them on an animal

663
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:14,120
Speaker 2: versus on just you know, growing on the you know,

664
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:16,960
Speaker 2: the the piling that a peer is resting on or something.

665
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you know, seeing the whales in the wild

666
00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:21,919
Speaker 1: and seeing them close up, like they're close enough where

667
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 1: you could you could touch the barnacles if you wanted to.

668
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 1: I did not, and I only only touched the whale once.

669
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: I'm like that's good enough. I only need to make

670
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:33,880
Speaker 1: physical contact with the gray whale once. I'm good. But

671
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:36,920
Speaker 1: you know, there is this kind of like feeling that

672
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:39,879
Speaker 1: that that you end up having. It's like should I help?

673
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 1: Should I scrape. You know, not that you would, but

674
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 1: you know you want to sort of help the creature. Again.

675
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:49,239
Speaker 1: You think of it almost like a dog, Whereas if

676
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 1: your dog came up and your dog had some sort

677
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: of always the seed pods or something stuck in its fur, like,

678
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 1: you'd want to help it out. If your cat has

679
00:37:57,160 --> 00:37:59,279
Speaker 1: a has something stuck in its fur, you're going to

680
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: reach in there and and pull it out and get

681
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:06,279
Speaker 1: bitten as a thank you. But the whales, they're not

682
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:07,360
Speaker 1: asking for this treatment.

683
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:09,560
Speaker 2: Well, and as I'll get to in a minute, I

684
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:13,600
Speaker 2: think there's more ambiguity than we met realizing about exactly

685
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 2: what the pluses and minuses of this relationship are, but

686
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 2: a little a little more about barnacles themselves. So the

687
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:24,760
Speaker 2: life cycle of a barnacle goes like this. It begins

688
00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:27,840
Speaker 2: as a microscopic larva that looks kind of like a

689
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 2: cross between a flea and a shrimp. And in this

690
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 2: larval stage, after being released by the parent, the barnacle

691
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,800
Speaker 2: swims around freely in the water column. So it begins

692
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:41,840
Speaker 2: life as a free swimming organism. It's just one of

693
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 2: the trillions of zoa plankton bobbing around out there in

694
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 2: the ocean, and as a larva, the barnacle's primary mission

695
00:38:49,680 --> 00:38:52,720
Speaker 2: is to find a home. It's looking for real estate

696
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:55,319
Speaker 2: it can stake out where it will spend the rest

697
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:59,239
Speaker 2: of its life. It does this by exploring various surfaces

698
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:02,279
Speaker 2: and testing the properties of these surfaces. A lot of

699
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:06,360
Speaker 2: species are attracted to chemicals secreted by adult barnacles that

700
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 2: let them know they have encountered a good place to

701
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,800
Speaker 2: swarm and congregate. And when the larva finds a surface

702
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:17,440
Speaker 2: it approves of, it proceeds to glue its head down permanently.

703
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 2: So the barnacle secretes a form of quick drying adhesive

704
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,360
Speaker 2: from its antennae, and it cements itself and this is

705
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 2: again head down to the place where it will spend

706
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 2: the rest of its life. Apparently, barnacle cement is one

707
00:39:31,320 --> 00:39:36,160
Speaker 2: of the strongest, if not the single strongest adhesive substance

708
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 2: known in nature, so much that scientists have studied it

709
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 2: in hopes of developing better synthetic glues for use in

710
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:47,680
Speaker 2: medicine and microelectronics, especially in conditions where you need to

711
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,480
Speaker 2: glue things together that are already wet. That's kind of

712
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,440
Speaker 2: interesting property, as like, so you're already under the water,

713
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 2: both surfaces are wet, so how exactly do you glue

714
00:39:57,560 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 2: this together effectively?

715
00:39:59,360 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 1: Interesting.

716
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,720
Speaker 2: Once a barnacle is fixed to whatever surface it has chosen,

717
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 2: it begins building its calcium carbonate outer plates, and it

718
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:12,600
Speaker 2: begins eating and growing. And the barnacles shell on the

719
00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 2: outside typically consists of plates that surround the animal on

720
00:40:16,080 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 2: all sides to form a kind of cone, and then

721
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 2: usually a few more plates on top that form a

722
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 2: sort of door that the barnacle can close when it's

723
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:28,960
Speaker 2: threatened or closed to conserve moisture, say, if it's in

724
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:31,800
Speaker 2: an intertidal area, when the tide goes out, the barnacles

725
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 2: exposed to the air can close up its door to

726
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:37,960
Speaker 2: keep some liquid inside, and then of course it can

727
00:40:38,040 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 2: open them again when it is time to feed. Barnacles

728
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 2: are filter feeders, much like bilein whales, but while whales

729
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 2: feed by pushing water through their bleen, barnacles feed by

730
00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 2: waving their feet around in the water. Barnacles have these

731
00:40:55,840 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 2: little legs called seeri, which are segmented like the pindages

732
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:04,680
Speaker 2: of other crustaceans, but covered in long little filaments, so

733
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 2: they look like a cross between curly shrimp legs and

734
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:12,400
Speaker 2: peacock feathers. Rob I've attached some pictures for you to

735
00:41:12,440 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 2: look at while I'm describing here. So they often get

736
00:41:15,160 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 2: they'll kind of like fan these out, and they do

737
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:19,920
Speaker 2: really kind of look like a fan a bunch of

738
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:24,200
Speaker 2: these legs arranged in parallel with these little feathery kind

739
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:27,840
Speaker 2: of hairs coming off of them, and they essentially function

740
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 2: like fishing nets. The barnacles wave these cirii through the water,

741
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 2: collecting plankton and organic detritus and then drawing them into

742
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 2: the shell to bring the food to their mouths.

743
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, this image is very delightful, and I guess it's

744
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 1: harder to hate on barnacles as much if you think

745
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:51,240
Speaker 1: of them as like tiny old people who set down

746
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 1: forever on you know, say the deck of a cruise ship,

747
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:58,239
Speaker 1: gluw their butts down and then begin to wave their

748
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:00,640
Speaker 1: fancily dressed legs in the air.

749
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:03,800
Speaker 2: Well, that's right. It wouldn't be gluing their butts, it

750
00:42:03,840 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 2: would be gluing their foreheads down. So you would have

751
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 2: to imagine the human analogy is if you live by

752
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:13,720
Speaker 2: gluing your forehead to a rock and then surrounding yourself

753
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 2: with external bone places like you grow some bones on

754
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 2: the outside. They're bones that live outside. You surround yourself

755
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:22,239
Speaker 2: with that. Then you wave your feet around in the

756
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:25,719
Speaker 2: air until you catch i don't know, something dead with

757
00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:28,319
Speaker 2: your toes and your leg hairs, and then you bring

758
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:29,360
Speaker 2: that down to your mouth.

759
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 1: Okay, well that sounds a little more monstrous again, we're

760
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:35,320
Speaker 1: skewing monstrous again. But it's still delightful.

761
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:50,839
Speaker 2: Another really amazing thing about barnacles is their sexual reproduction. Barnacles,

762
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,920
Speaker 2: typically in the same individual, have both male and female

763
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:59,040
Speaker 2: sex organs, but they can't reproduce asexually. They don't bud

764
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 2: like some other sessile organisms. They have to find a

765
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:06,280
Speaker 2: partner to mate with. But they're barnacles. They are stuck

766
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:08,680
Speaker 2: to one place, remember, glued the forehead down, so they

767
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:12,360
Speaker 2: can't go wandering around to locate a mate. Other sessile

768
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:16,719
Speaker 2: organisms deal with the fact that they are immobile by

769
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:19,840
Speaker 2: simply kind of spamming the water with sperm and eggs

770
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:23,239
Speaker 2: and hoping to you, hoping that those sex cells meet

771
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:25,799
Speaker 2: up with opposite sex cels somewhere out there. This is

772
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:29,200
Speaker 2: known as broadcast spawning. I've read it alleged in many

773
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:33,240
Speaker 2: sources that barnacles never do this. They don't do exactly

774
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 2: that with both sex cells, but it does seem some

775
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 2: barnacles engage in sperm casting, or at least the sperm

776
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 2: but not the eggs, are released into open water just

777
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 2: in hopes that it will drift to an individual with

778
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 2: an egg cell. This is according to one paper I

779
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 2: found by Marian barizandai at All called Something Darwin Didn't

780
00:43:53,680 --> 00:43:58,920
Speaker 2: Know About Barnacles Sperm cast Mating in a common stalked Species,

781
00:43:59,480 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 2: published Proceedings of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences in

782
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:08,839
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen. This experiment found that Pacific intertitle Gooseneck barnacles

783
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 2: do sometimes fertilize eggs by sperm casting. But this result

784
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 2: was surprising, and the very reason it was surprising was

785
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 2: that for the most part, barnacles have a different strategy.

786
00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:23,560
Speaker 2: They actually physically copulate, or as the scientists call it,

787
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 2: pseudo copulate, in order to exchange sperm, which means they

788
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 2: have to find a mate by reaching. So for this reason,

789
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 2: it has been suggested that barnacles probably have the longest

790
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 2: penis to body size ratio of any animal on Earth,

791
00:44:40,719 --> 00:44:44,480
Speaker 2: with penises measuring more than the rest of the total

792
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 2: length of the body many times over. I've read different

793
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:50,800
Speaker 2: estimates for this. Exactly how much longer it is seems unclear,

794
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:54,680
Speaker 2: but a commonly cided figure is eight times body length.

795
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 2: And these are used kind of how you might imagine.

796
00:44:56,680 --> 00:44:59,360
Speaker 2: They sense around. They feel around at their neighbors to

797
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 2: find neighbor to pseudocopulate with, and barnacles can act either

798
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:07,759
Speaker 2: as males or females for the purposes of mating, so

799
00:45:07,840 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 2: they all possess these penises, and they are fascinating and

800
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:17,280
Speaker 2: remarkably adaptable organs depending on environmental conditions, so like one

801
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:22,319
Speaker 2: factor is the choppiness of the water around them, so

802
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:25,799
Speaker 2: they will grow longer in calmer waters, but shorter and

803
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:29,280
Speaker 2: thicker and choppy turbulent waters, because as you can imagine,

804
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:32,239
Speaker 2: long thin appendages are more difficult to control when the

805
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:36,800
Speaker 2: water is moving around a lot. But these the properties

806
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 2: of this organ also depend on the density of barnacle population.

807
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 2: So when neighbors are nearby, they don't need to reach

808
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 2: as far, so they will be shorter and less elastic,

809
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 2: But when neighbors are sparse, when the population is less dense,

810
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:51,320
Speaker 2: they grow very long and elastic.

811
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember a friend of the show, Mara Hart,

812
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:56,800
Speaker 1: in her book Sex and the Sea as the whole

813
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,960
Speaker 1: section talking about barnacles and their reproductive strategies.

814
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:03,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember Mare having a lot barnacle penis is

815
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 2: officially amazing, but anyway, so as filter feeders, barnacles usually

816
00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 2: attach themselves to stationary objects in places with a lot

817
00:46:13,680 --> 00:46:15,960
Speaker 2: of activity, whether that's a rock or part of a

818
00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:19,360
Speaker 2: human built structure or something else. They will attach themselves

819
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:23,319
Speaker 2: to a place where there's a lot of exchange of

820
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 2: water back and forth. Because again they can't go out hunting.

821
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:29,479
Speaker 2: They need water containing their food to wash over them.

822
00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 2: So it's no good for a barnacle to sit around

823
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:36,400
Speaker 2: in calm, still waters. They want flow in exchange.

824
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:38,440
Speaker 1: Location, location, location, exactly.

825
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:43,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want foot traffic. Oftentimes this means posting up

826
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 2: in the intertidal zone where the tides are going to

827
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 2: charge in and then drain out throughout the day. But

828
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:51,960
Speaker 2: if you're a really lucky barnicle, you could manage to

829
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:55,759
Speaker 2: attach yourself to a rock that moves, a rock that

830
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 2: travels along its own course, causing water full of plankton

831
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 2: and other goods these to wash over you. Constantly, and

832
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 2: for this reason you will see barnacles do well by

833
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 2: attaching themselves to the hulls of ships. This is a

834
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 2: common problem in shipping. But for millions of years, before

835
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 2: there were ships, there were whales, giant boulders that swim, and.

836
00:47:18,560 --> 00:47:21,719
Speaker 1: Of course before whales, there were sea turtles. And I

837
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: believe I was reading that whale barnacles derived from sea

838
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:26,880
Speaker 1: turtle barnacles.

839
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 2: That's right. It is thought that whale barnacles evolved from

840
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:34,280
Speaker 2: what are called turtle barnacles, which don't just occupy turtles.

841
00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:37,319
Speaker 2: They found them the shells of sea turtles, but also

842
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:40,759
Speaker 2: other things like the carapaces of crabs, and on some

843
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:43,920
Speaker 2: sirenians like manatees and so forth.

844
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:48,760
Speaker 1: But you can imagine the why this diversification takes place

845
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 1: when whales become a possibility. Oh, these vast expanses of

846
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 1: hide to colonize.

847
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:58,840
Speaker 2: So many whales, especially filter feeding whales, are known to

848
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:04,280
Speaker 2: accumulate barnacles, but gray whales really excel as barnacle hosts.

849
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:08,440
Speaker 2: In tons of pictures of these animals, again, they just

850
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 2: you know, you will see them covered in patches of

851
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 2: these things. There is one species of acorn barnacle you

852
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:20,920
Speaker 2: mentioned them earlier, called Cryptolipus rachianecti. These have been allegedly

853
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:24,360
Speaker 2: living off of gray whales in particular for millions of years.

854
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:28,440
Speaker 2: But looking at whale barnacles in general, I wanted to

855
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:31,600
Speaker 2: return to this question of what is the exact symbiotic

856
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 2: relationship between whales and their barnacles. Are the barnacles actual

857
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:40,799
Speaker 2: parasites causing net harm to their hosts, or is the

858
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 2: relationship an example of what biologists would call commensalism where

859
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 2: the host is not really impacted one way or the other,

860
00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:51,840
Speaker 2: but the barnacle gets a benefit. Or is it possible

861
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 2: there are mutualistic benefits. Do both the whale and the

862
00:48:56,040 --> 00:48:59,240
Speaker 2: barnacle get something good out of the relationship. It seems

863
00:48:59,239 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 2: like for a long time experts thought that whales in

864
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:06,799
Speaker 2: their barnacles were generally an example of a commensal relationship.

865
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 2: So the barnacles get a benefit, get the benefit of

866
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 2: a moving substrate to bring them a steady flow of plankton,

867
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 2: as well as getting general protection from predators. And you

868
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:20,239
Speaker 2: can see this reduced risk of predation when attached to

869
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:23,520
Speaker 2: a whale body in the fact that whale barnacles in particular,

870
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 2: have evolved to possess a less defensively oriented outer plate

871
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:32,560
Speaker 2: structure they usually have rob If you compare pictures of

872
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:35,319
Speaker 2: different kind of barnacles, it seems like whale barnacles often

873
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:37,799
Speaker 2: just have more kind of fleshy bits poking out of

874
00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,560
Speaker 2: their shells at all times. They don't close their plate

875
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:44,600
Speaker 2: doors completely or as completely, so they just seem like

876
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:47,239
Speaker 2: they have to be less focused on defense than some

877
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 2: of the barnacles are.

878
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: This probably also contributes to the disturbing quality to some

879
00:49:54,120 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 1: to seeing barnacles on whales, because yeah, it's more obviously

880
00:49:58,160 --> 00:50:00,839
Speaker 1: some sort of creature living on the the whales high

881
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:03,120
Speaker 1: and you can't just dismiss it as think some sort

882
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:06,720
Speaker 1: of stone like detritus that's built up there.

883
00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:10,400
Speaker 2: Right, So what's undeniable is that the barnacles get a

884
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 2: benefit from the relationship. But is it true that the

885
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:18,280
Speaker 2: relationship is basically nothing to the whale, neither helpful nor harmful. Well,

886
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:22,480
Speaker 2: this seems very debatable. For one thing, having barnacles on

887
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:27,279
Speaker 2: the skin would quite clearly reduce the hydrodynamic efficiency of

888
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:29,960
Speaker 2: the whale's movement. As a point of analogy, this is

889
00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 2: not a perfect analogy. But I was reading from the

890
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:37,440
Speaker 2: National Marine Sanctuary Foundation about the effect of barnacles on

891
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:40,480
Speaker 2: ships built by humans, and they write, quote, the US

892
00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:43,959
Speaker 2: Navy estimates that heavy barnacle growth on ships can add

893
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:47,839
Speaker 2: weight and increase drag by nearly sixty percent, which can

894
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:50,680
Speaker 2: lead to as much as a forty percent increase in

895
00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:54,719
Speaker 2: fuel consumption. Now, obviously those figures don't map exactly onto

896
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:57,719
Speaker 2: an organism like a whale, but the principle holds true.

897
00:50:57,719 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 2: It seems clear that barnacles would make a way a

898
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:06,040
Speaker 2: less efficient swimmer, even if only by a marginal percent. Also,

899
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:09,719
Speaker 2: the fact that whales have been observed to engage in

900
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:14,279
Speaker 2: behavior that looks like an attempt to remove barnacles would

901
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:16,960
Speaker 2: probably also mean that they are at least somewhat perceived

902
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:19,680
Speaker 2: as a nuisance by the whale, at least assuming those

903
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 2: interpretations of that behavior is correct. Now, Rob, I can't

904
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:24,680
Speaker 2: remember if you mentioned it earlier, but you had said

905
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 2: something to me about observations of whales appearing to want

906
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 2: to scrape barnacles off their body, maybe by rubbing up

907
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 2: against things. And maybe we don't understand exactly what the

908
00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:39,960
Speaker 2: purpose of that behavior is, but it's been interpreted as

909
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:41,560
Speaker 2: an attempt to remove barnacles.

910
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. And they'll do this not

911
00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:46,439
Speaker 1: only in the bottoms of boats and ships, but they'll

912
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:48,799
Speaker 1: do this on rocks in the sand, and also just

913
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,720
Speaker 1: through the act of feeding, because again, these are bottom

914
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:55,640
Speaker 1: feeders who scrape half of their body against the bottom

915
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:59,560
Speaker 1: of the sea. But yeah, I guess the thing we

916
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind is that it's not just

917
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:04,160
Speaker 1: the barnacles on the body, they are also the sea

918
00:52:04,239 --> 00:52:09,279
Speaker 1: lies they're scarring. There's reason to believe that. I guess

919
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 1: a whale could itch for other reasons, or have some

920
00:52:11,560 --> 00:52:13,799
Speaker 1: sort of skin irritation for other reasons, and it might

921
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 1: be pleasurable for other reasons for it to scrape its

922
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:21,560
Speaker 1: body against something, even if that scraping does in effect

923
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 1: remove barnacles from its skin.

924
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:27,719
Speaker 2: Yes, so there are several ways where you might be

925
00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 2: able to interpret barnacles as parasites as causing net harm

926
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 2: to the whales. However, I came across another idea that

927
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:39,320
Speaker 2: I thought was very interesting. Again, this is not certain,

928
00:52:39,680 --> 00:52:43,200
Speaker 2: it's debatable, but some researchers have speculated there could be

929
00:52:43,280 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 2: cases where whale barnacles are actually providing a benefit to

930
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:49,080
Speaker 2: the whale. Now what could that be? It's hard to

931
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 2: imagine by looking at it. But what has been proposed

932
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:56,480
Speaker 2: is that barnacles may serve as a form of armor

933
00:52:56,640 --> 00:52:59,959
Speaker 2: or as a weapon in some cases. Now, what would

934
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:02,880
Speaker 2: the evidence for this idea? Well, I was looking at

935
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 2: a paper by John K. B Ford and Randall R.

936
00:53:05,719 --> 00:53:08,400
Speaker 2: Reeves published in The Mammal Review in two thousand and

937
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 2: eight called fight or Flight Anti predator strategies of billen whales. Now,

938
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:16,319
Speaker 2: something we've already alluded to and we're going to talk

939
00:53:16,360 --> 00:53:19,560
Speaker 2: about more extensively in the next episode is orca predation

940
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:24,000
Speaker 2: on gray whales in particular. But orcas, also known as

941
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:28,040
Speaker 2: killer whales, are major predators to a number of mistacetti

942
00:53:28,280 --> 00:53:32,200
Speaker 2: or billen whale species, and the authors of this paper

943
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:36,640
Speaker 2: argue that understanding the role of orcas as predators has

944
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:41,160
Speaker 2: been hampered by poor understanding of the different predator prey

945
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 2: dynamics quote, including the relative vulnerability of different misseddeceit species

946
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:50,959
Speaker 2: and age classes to killer whales and how those prey

947
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 2: animals avoid predation. So, what are the different patterns of

948
00:53:55,040 --> 00:53:58,719
Speaker 2: behavior that different prey species of whales resort to when

949
00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 2: an orca starts threat them, or when a pod of

950
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:04,839
Speaker 2: orcas threatens them. The authors argue there are two main

951
00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 2: classes of behavioral response, and those are fight or flight.

952
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:13,800
Speaker 2: The flight strategy is fairly simple. When you spot kular whales,

953
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:17,320
Speaker 2: you get out of there. The authors describe the strategy

954
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 2: as rapid monodirectional swimming away from the orcas at a

955
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:25,200
Speaker 2: pace of between twenty and forty kilometers an hour, a

956
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,400
Speaker 2: speed that the orcas cannot generally keep up with or

957
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 2: will not keep up with usually, and this behavior has

958
00:54:31,640 --> 00:54:36,760
Speaker 2: been observed in six species of the genus Baleinoptera, which

959
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 2: contains animals like the mink, fin and blue whales. On

960
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:45,160
Speaker 2: the other hand, many different species exhibit what the authors

961
00:54:45,200 --> 00:54:50,400
Speaker 2: call the fight strategy, which quote consists of active physical defense,

962
00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:54,600
Speaker 2: including self defense by single individuals, defense of calves by

963
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:59,040
Speaker 2: their mothers, and coordinated defense by groups of whales. It's

964
00:54:59,080 --> 00:55:02,640
Speaker 2: documented for five mystic seats, and they list the Southern

965
00:55:02,719 --> 00:55:06,280
Speaker 2: right whale, the North Atlantic right whale, the bowhead whale,

966
00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:10,120
Speaker 2: the humpback whale, and the gray whale. The authors argue

967
00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:13,399
Speaker 2: that these strategies are not incidental, they are selected by

968
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:17,960
Speaker 2: evolution for each species to maximize survival odds based on

969
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:22,480
Speaker 2: the whale's other physical characteristics. Species that engage in the

970
00:55:22,520 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 2: flight strategy have streamlined bodies that are capable of fast,

971
00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 2: sustained endurance swimming. They also quote tend to favor pelagic habitats,

972
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 2: which that means open sea, deep water and calving grounds

973
00:55:38,120 --> 00:55:42,520
Speaker 2: where prolonged escape sprints from killer whales are possible. Meanwhile,

974
00:55:42,600 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 2: they say that whales that engage in fight strategies tend

975
00:55:47,040 --> 00:55:50,400
Speaker 2: to have more robust body shapes, and they tend to

976
00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 2: be slower swimmers, but they're also usually maneuverable swimmers, so

977
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 2: they they might not be able to do monodirection, you know,

978
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 2: swimming in one direction really fast for a long time,

979
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 2: but they can kind of move around quickly within a

980
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:06,440
Speaker 2: small space if they need to, say, reposition their bodies

981
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 2: or deliver a blow. These species also quote often calve

982
00:56:11,200 --> 00:56:15,200
Speaker 2: or migrating coastal areas where proximity to shallow water provides

983
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:19,560
Speaker 2: refuge and an advantage in defense. Most fight species have

984
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:24,120
Speaker 2: either callosities, which are rough and hardened patches of skin,

985
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:29,720
Speaker 2: or incrustations of barnacles on their bodies, which may serve

986
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:34,640
Speaker 2: either primarily or secondarily as weapons or armor for defense.

987
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:39,080
Speaker 2: So I think that's a really interesting inference here. Specifically,

988
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:42,799
Speaker 2: whales that are more likely to fight predators rather than

989
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:45,960
Speaker 2: run from them also happen to be the ones that

990
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:50,520
Speaker 2: are more likely to have either callosities, these raised calloused

991
00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:55,800
Speaker 2: patches of skin, or colonies of barnacles on their skin, which,

992
00:56:55,880 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 2: of course, you know, a colony of barnacles, you do

993
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:00,960
Speaker 2: not want to bite into that or get slapped with it.

994
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:04,440
Speaker 2: And the authors right that humpback whales are believed to

995
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:08,759
Speaker 2: make use of these barnacle encrusted patches as weapons during

996
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:12,319
Speaker 2: fights between males at breeding grounds. They say, you know,

997
00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 2: there are many different kind of moves that humpback whales

998
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:18,920
Speaker 2: will do against each other when they're displaying aggressive behaviors

999
00:57:18,960 --> 00:57:21,800
Speaker 2: to other males. They will do headbutting and ramming of

1000
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:25,760
Speaker 2: each other, striking blows, and they will hit each other

1001
00:57:25,840 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 2: with long flippers and tail flukes. And the authors point

1002
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 2: out that these parts of the body where they will

1003
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:35,920
Speaker 2: hit each other are also parts of the body areas

1004
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:41,240
Speaker 2: where there are large encrustations of barnacles usually found. They say,

1005
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:44,040
Speaker 2: quote a blow from a barnacle encrusted surface would likely

1006
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:48,840
Speaker 2: have enhanced effectiveness in aggressive physical interactions, and from this

1007
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:51,320
Speaker 2: they go on to argue that these same types of

1008
00:57:51,360 --> 00:57:55,800
Speaker 2: attacks are probably used by humpback whales against predatory orcas,

1009
00:57:56,120 --> 00:58:00,439
Speaker 2: and the barnacles probably provide an advantage in the same way. Now,

1010
00:58:00,600 --> 00:58:03,640
Speaker 2: the same is maybe not exactly true of gray whales,

1011
00:58:03,680 --> 00:58:06,840
Speaker 2: because they say gray whales don't fight quite as much.

1012
00:58:06,920 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 2: They don't show examples of intraspecific aggression associated with male

1013
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:17,280
Speaker 2: competition like the humpback whales do, so the males are

1014
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 2: less often fighting each other like humpback whales. But they

1015
00:58:22,200 --> 00:58:24,960
Speaker 2: say that barnacles on the skin of gray whales could

1016
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:28,440
Speaker 2: still help protect the whales as basically a type of

1017
00:58:28,480 --> 00:58:31,960
Speaker 2: defensive armor. So if an orca tries to ram the

1018
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 2: body of a gray whale and it's got an incrustation

1019
00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 2: of barnacles on it, or they try to bite the

1020
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:41,200
Speaker 2: gray whale and they bite them on an incrustation of barnacles,

1021
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:44,080
Speaker 2: that seems much more likely to harm the attacking animal.

1022
00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:49,320
Speaker 1: This is fascinating. So on one level, yes, the mating

1023
00:58:49,360 --> 00:58:51,240
Speaker 1: of the grey whales, we'll probably get into that more

1024
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:55,240
Speaker 1: in the next episode. But yeah, there definitely is more

1025
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:59,120
Speaker 1: of a sort of a free love kind of a

1026
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:02,520
Speaker 1: vibe going on among the gray whales. So the males

1027
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:09,040
Speaker 1: are not necessarily competing with each other, it seems now.

1028
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:12,360
Speaker 1: But on the same level, I mean, the whales are

1029
00:59:12,360 --> 00:59:14,120
Speaker 1: going to come into contact with each other and the

1030
00:59:14,160 --> 00:59:17,880
Speaker 1: barnacles to do scar other whales sort of at least incidentally,

1031
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:21,080
Speaker 1: this was pointed out to us in Mexico by one

1032
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 1: of the local guides on the boats. Of course, they're

1033
00:59:24,320 --> 00:59:28,160
Speaker 1: covered in scars from various things, everything from orca attacks

1034
00:59:28,920 --> 00:59:34,560
Speaker 1: two barnacles scraping them via contact with other whales. And yeah,

1035
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:37,160
Speaker 1: this is an interesting idea though, because on one level,

1036
00:59:37,680 --> 00:59:42,200
Speaker 1: a really good blow from a fluke or a flipper

1037
00:59:42,480 --> 00:59:45,560
Speaker 1: from a gray whale I've read it is enough certainly

1038
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:49,400
Speaker 1: to kill a man, but also could potentially kill an

1039
00:59:49,520 --> 00:59:52,520
Speaker 1: orca in one blow as well. But I guess you're

1040
00:59:52,520 --> 00:59:55,360
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to get that killer blow every time.

1041
00:59:55,880 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're just going to maybe make a lighter contact

1042
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:01,440
Speaker 1: or a near my yes, and you can imagine those

1043
01:00:01,440 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: scenarios would be enhanced by some sort of barnacle encrusting possibly.

1044
01:00:06,440 --> 01:00:08,560
Speaker 2: Now to come back on that, you could imagine other

1045
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:13,720
Speaker 2: reasonings as well that there might be this correlation where

1046
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:16,280
Speaker 2: species that are more likely to stand and fight when

1047
01:00:16,320 --> 01:00:18,720
Speaker 2: attacked by orcos rather than run away, are also the

1048
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:22,280
Speaker 2: ones more likely to be encrusted with barnacles. Maybe there

1049
01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:26,200
Speaker 2: is a common cause, like barnacles don't actually make useful

1050
01:00:26,320 --> 01:00:29,560
Speaker 2: armor or make useful weapons, but the slow swimming that

1051
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:32,600
Speaker 2: makes a gray whale have to rely on fighting rather

1052
01:00:32,640 --> 01:00:36,920
Speaker 2: than rapid escape also makes it more susceptible to barnacle infestation.

1053
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:40,280
Speaker 2: That kind of thing could be possible, But I think

1054
01:00:40,280 --> 01:00:43,080
Speaker 2: it's an interesting correlation, and it makes you wonder how

1055
01:00:43,120 --> 01:00:47,080
Speaker 2: you would test that further, Like could you compare different

1056
01:00:47,160 --> 01:00:50,000
Speaker 2: individual whales of the same species and look at maybe

1057
01:00:50,040 --> 01:00:53,200
Speaker 2: how much barnacle loading they have and then observe their

1058
01:00:53,240 --> 01:00:57,720
Speaker 2: relative success. It's a protecting calves from orcapods. Do mothers

1059
01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:01,080
Speaker 2: with more barnacles win more fights againsts and so forth?

1060
01:01:01,720 --> 01:01:03,320
Speaker 1: I mean, it's also worth noting in all of this

1061
01:01:03,520 --> 01:01:07,760
Speaker 1: that the young gray whales again have no barnacles. They're

1062
01:01:07,760 --> 01:01:10,720
Speaker 1: born without barnacles. They will accumulate barnacles, but it takes

1063
01:01:10,720 --> 01:01:14,840
Speaker 1: a little time for the hard barnacles to actually build up,

1064
01:01:15,600 --> 01:01:22,560
Speaker 1: so especially during the period when they're leaving those sheltered lagoons.

1065
01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 1: This is when they are at their most vulnerable for

1066
01:01:24,840 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: a number of reasons.

1067
01:01:26,800 --> 01:01:29,360
Speaker 2: However, it's another thing the authors point out that I

1068
01:01:29,360 --> 01:01:33,040
Speaker 2: think is worth remembering is that whales, including gray whales,

1069
01:01:33,080 --> 01:01:36,920
Speaker 2: are not orcas only prey, and they are an especially

1070
01:01:37,160 --> 01:01:40,960
Speaker 2: dangerous and costly type of prey for the orcas to pursue.

1071
01:01:42,200 --> 01:01:45,880
Speaker 2: The author's right quote, the rarity of observed successful attacks

1072
01:01:45,880 --> 01:01:49,480
Speaker 2: by killer whales on bileen whales, especially adults, maybe an

1073
01:01:49,480 --> 01:01:54,200
Speaker 2: indication of the effectiveness of these anti predator strategies. Bileene

1074
01:01:54,200 --> 01:01:58,040
Speaker 2: whales likely offer low profitability to killer whales relative to

1075
01:01:58,080 --> 01:02:01,880
Speaker 2: some other marine mammal prey. High speed pursuit of flight

1076
01:02:01,920 --> 01:02:05,400
Speaker 2: species has a high energetic cost and the low probability

1077
01:02:05,400 --> 01:02:09,360
Speaker 2: of success, while attacks on fight species can involve prolonged

1078
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:13,200
Speaker 2: handling times and a risk of serious injury. So the

1079
01:02:13,200 --> 01:02:16,760
Speaker 2: balen whales here are not helpless against these orcas like

1080
01:02:16,840 --> 01:02:19,560
Speaker 2: they put up a real fight. And if the orcas

1081
01:02:19,600 --> 01:02:22,480
Speaker 2: are going to eat a whale calf like the they

1082
01:02:22,480 --> 01:02:23,560
Speaker 2: will make them work for it.

1083
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:25,800
Speaker 1: So of course, yeah, they will work for it. They

1084
01:02:25,800 --> 01:02:29,320
Speaker 1: are hard workers the orca, but as is often the case.

1085
01:02:29,360 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 1: We've discussed this with various predator prayer relationships, Like it's

1086
01:02:32,800 --> 01:02:36,960
Speaker 1: every little bit of deterrent that adds up to survival,

1087
01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:41,560
Speaker 1: Like anything that makes you a slightly more difficult meal,

1088
01:02:42,080 --> 01:02:46,960
Speaker 1: then you increase the odds that the predators will realize

1089
01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:50,480
Speaker 1: that this is not worth it. Yeah, and we will

1090
01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:51,880
Speaker 1: get into this in the next episode. But I mean,

1091
01:02:51,880 --> 01:02:54,280
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons the lagoons are safe harbors,

1092
01:02:54,880 --> 01:02:57,800
Speaker 1: is that is that that they have found a place

1093
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:00,840
Speaker 1: to go that do not favor the old Orcus and

1094
01:03:00,880 --> 01:03:06,160
Speaker 1: the Orca's intelligent pack or pod hunters that they are. Uh,

1095
01:03:06,360 --> 01:03:09,120
Speaker 1: they will attack their most one of their most dangerous

1096
01:03:09,160 --> 01:03:13,240
Speaker 1: prey when they have the optimal advantage, when they have

1097
01:03:13,640 --> 01:03:16,960
Speaker 1: everything lining up for them. Uh, they're not gonna They're

1098
01:03:17,000 --> 01:03:18,840
Speaker 1: not gonna do it if they if they don't have

1099
01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:19,840
Speaker 1: a key advantage.

1100
01:03:20,160 --> 01:03:21,959
Speaker 2: So I guess more on that next time.

1101
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:23,200
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1102
01:03:23,240 --> 01:03:24,720
Speaker 2: Wait, before we close out, what do you what do

1103
01:03:24,720 --> 01:03:28,320
Speaker 2: you think about the barnacle armor slash weapon hypothesis. You

1104
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:30,240
Speaker 2: think that's got anything going for it or not?

1105
01:03:30,800 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 1: I like it. I certainly buy that at least partial

1106
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:41,200
Speaker 1: encrusting with barnacles would perhaps provide this incidental extra level

1107
01:03:41,320 --> 01:03:45,040
Speaker 1: of defense or offense. I just I'm not as sure

1108
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:50,200
Speaker 1: how that maybe factors into like the grander like evolutionary

1109
01:03:50,320 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: scheme of things.

1110
01:03:51,160 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, and how it balances out against I

1111
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:59,240
Speaker 2: guess negative impacts from say introducing drag and swimming and other.

1112
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:03,960
Speaker 1: Things, yeah, or mating behavior and so forth. But I mean,

1113
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:07,240
Speaker 1: they've they've been scraepy with barnacles for a long time,

1114
01:04:07,360 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 1: so they're accustomed to it. It is a part of

1115
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:13,240
Speaker 1: who they are, which I think is one of the

1116
01:04:14,040 --> 01:04:16,920
Speaker 1: big take coms again for thinking about gray whales and

1117
01:04:16,960 --> 01:04:21,960
Speaker 1: their barnacles and their lice and their most notable predator, Like,

1118
01:04:22,040 --> 01:04:26,080
Speaker 1: these are creatures that are not only a part of

1119
01:04:26,120 --> 01:04:28,720
Speaker 1: their lives, but they have shaped the life of the

1120
01:04:28,760 --> 01:04:31,160
Speaker 1: grey whale. They've shaped what the gray whale is, and

1121
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:33,760
Speaker 1: you can't remove them from the scenario. All right. Well,

1122
01:04:33,800 --> 01:04:35,280
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna go ahead and call it

1123
01:04:35,320 --> 01:04:37,760
Speaker 1: for this episode. We'll be back in the next core

1124
01:04:37,800 --> 01:04:40,760
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind to discuss gray

1125
01:04:40,840 --> 01:04:43,680
Speaker 1: whales in greater detail. We'll talk about there there were

1126
01:04:43,840 --> 01:04:47,320
Speaker 1: more about the relationship with the orcas. We'll talk about

1127
01:04:48,160 --> 01:04:50,120
Speaker 1: some of the variety of orcas as well. We'll kind

1128
01:04:50,120 --> 01:04:52,160
Speaker 1: of go on an Orco's tangent and then we'll get

1129
01:04:52,200 --> 01:04:55,840
Speaker 1: into more details about their migration and their reproduction. In

1130
01:04:55,880 --> 01:04:58,439
Speaker 1: the meantime, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.

1131
01:04:58,960 --> 01:05:01,080
Speaker 1: Do you have experience is with grey whales that you

1132
01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:03,120
Speaker 1: would like to share with us? Write in we'd love

1133
01:05:03,120 --> 01:05:05,600
Speaker 1: to hear them. Heck, if you have any experience with whales,

1134
01:05:05,680 --> 01:05:08,440
Speaker 1: If you've any whale watchers out there and you want

1135
01:05:08,440 --> 01:05:10,800
Speaker 1: to tell us about other species of whales that you're

1136
01:05:11,040 --> 01:05:14,760
Speaker 1: super into, let us know. I'm all revd up on

1137
01:05:15,440 --> 01:05:20,160
Speaker 1: whales and dolphins and porpoises right now, so I'm excited

1138
01:05:20,160 --> 01:05:23,120
Speaker 1: to see your photos and hear your stories. A reminder

1139
01:05:23,160 --> 01:05:25,360
Speaker 1: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science

1140
01:05:25,400 --> 01:05:28,560
Speaker 1: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays

1141
01:05:28,560 --> 01:05:30,919
Speaker 1: we do listener mail, On Wednesdays we do a short

1142
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:33,280
Speaker 1: form artifact or monster fact, and on Fridays we do

1143
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:35,200
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most

1144
01:05:35,240 --> 01:05:38,280
Speaker 1: serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.

1145
01:05:38,600 --> 01:05:42,000
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you

1146
01:05:42,040 --> 01:05:44,200
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback,

1147
01:05:44,240 --> 01:05:47,240
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other. To suggest a topic

1148
01:05:47,320 --> 01:05:49,480
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

1149
01:05:49,520 --> 01:05:52,360
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

1150
01:05:52,520 --> 01:06:01,000
Speaker 2: dot com.

1151
01:06:01,120 --> 01:06:04,080
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1152
01:06:04,160 --> 01:06:08,120
Speaker 3: more podcasts from iheartradiovi's the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1153
01:06:08,120 --> 01:06:24,040
Speaker 3: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.