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The Sea Doc Investigates: WhalesDr John CarlinPhotos by Rene LipmanMy wife asked me what I would be writing about next and I thought I would write about one of the largest animals I have ever seen – a whale. From Moby Dick to modern day conservation efforts, people's perception of whales have changed a lot in the past 100 years.Whales belong to the order Cetacea which comes from the ancient Greek word 'ketos' for 'huge fish' or 'sea monster'. All cetaceans are mammals and not fish as they are warm blooded, breathe using lungs, give birth to live young and feed with milk produced by the mother. Fossils from a region in Pakistan have helped to determine the origin of cetaceans that evolved from an ancestral animal which also gave rise to deer, camels, cows, pigs and hippos. Recent DNA molecular analyses have shown that hippos are the closest relation to whales and that they shared a semi-aquatic ancestor around 60 million years ago.... To read the rest of this article, you'll need to get your hands on Tanked Up Magazine. It's free. What are you waiting for? |
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