Word: cetologists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...which are endangered. That's twice as many as were taken in 2000, more than even the number hauled in by Norway, which simply ignores the moratorium. Next year Japan plans to bag 50 humpbacks, the endangered giants famous for their spectacular breaches and eerie subaqueous songs. Stanford University cetologist Stephen Palumbi says their addition to the scientific catch will confound attempts to monitor poaching through the dna testing of meat, a method that has proved remarkably effective in recent years...
...everything from avoiding predators to finding a mate--can easily become confused. Yet even after years of studying these big-brained creatures, scientists admit that's only an informed guess and doesn't explain groundings elsewhere. "I could give you an unlimited number of scenarios," says veteran Smithsonian cetologist James Mead, "and because we know so little about whale biology, any of them is possible...
Whales are gentle, playful creatures with enormous brains and extraordinary hearing. According to Cetologist Roger S. Payne of the New York Zoological Society, whales communicate with one another by "singing" at deep submarine frequencies, sounding like sitar concertos. Other scientists are trying to discover how whales can dive to 7,000 ft., where the pressure would compress a human lungful of air to a thin fluid, and then resurface with no ill effects. But for all their mystery, whales have interested men mainly because they have oil within their hulks. In the past decade alone, 607,000 have been slaughtered...
| 1 |