WHALE TEETH FULL

A new report published in May 2017 suggests that their gigantism came later, perhaps three million years ago, as prey became more tightly packed but patchier-the result of intense nutrient upwellings. (Interestingly, the animals didn’t start out as giants. “And yet our understanding of aspects of this anatomy is still tissue thin.” Many scientists concur that filter feeding found footing in the Oligocene (33.9 to 23 million years ago) as changes in Southern Ocean currents brought massive plankton blooms-a ready new food source. And, at least until American commercial whalers commenced heavy pursuit some 200 years ago, these relatively passive feeders gulping down little marine animals by the tonne did just fine. Having developed a tool and taste for other kinds of prey, baleen whales-known collectively as mysticetes-eventually split off and diverged into 12 or more species including the blue whale, the largest animal ever to have lived, along with humpbacks, grays, and right whales.

WHALE TEETH FULL

The feeding structure evolved stepwise some 30 million years ago when the oceans were full of toothed whales competing for limited food.

Fitting the plates into the mouth requires a large upper jaw, giving baleen whales a sort of upside-down grin. Hundreds of these flexible plates, made of the structural protein keratin, grow downward from a whale’s upper jaw, lined up like the slats of venetian blinds. “Ah, to be Jonah and watch baleen in action from a seat on a whale’s tongue,” he says.īaleen is the apparatus toothless whales rely on to filter food from the sea.

Enviable, that is, if you’re Alex Werth, a landlocked biologist who studies the feeding anatomy of whales. Had he glanced over his shoulder just before the “great fish” swallowed him, biblical Jonah would have had an enviable view. This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems.

Whale teeth