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New Species of Whale Discovered
dlesko writes: "Scientists have discovered a new species of whale, a startling find made through DNA analysis of some of the marine mammals that washed ashore in California over the past three decades."
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Where be my harpoon?
That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man - as his wont at intervals - stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened.
The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide- rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
"Man the mast-heads! Call all hands
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
It's funny; I started out reading the article to find out something I didn't know and instead was told something I already knew - that I don't know everything.
It's enough to make me swear off popular reporting of scientific stories.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
"It's clear that even for whales, these large animals everyone loves, there's a lot we don't know,. . . Scientists based the last identification of a new species of beaked whale, in 1991, in part on specimens found for sale in a fish market in Peru."
The Japanese especially love whales, that's why they are always undertaking 'scientific studies' of whale populations, which (totally coincindentally) results in having to sell the meat of the studied whales for local consumption in Japan. Considering that technology exist to remove miniscule DNA samples from the whales to study their popluation and migration patterns, one has to wonder why the Japanese instead choose to kill the animals they are trying to learn about.
There was a massive campaign in the US when it discovered dolphins were being killed by tuna fisherman, and protests led to labelling tuna as tuna as 'Dolphin Safe'. What we need now is a world-wide campaign to to label TVs, cars, and audio systems as being made in countries where Whale is not on the menu.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Interesting... Click this Link to see it.
It's mostly that these animals are not eaten because they are rare, but because they are tasty (or supposedly have healing or "up-lifting" powers). They usualy are close to extinction because they are sought after.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
bacon? yuk. factory farmed animal fed on ground up parts of its own species, forced to live in its own shit in cramped conditions and is force fed till killed at an early age. Hmmm...I bin resisting for the last 18 years somehow, somehow.
cultural thing I guess. Maybe American veggies always give in to twinkies or summink.
So does that mean vegans are higher on the evolutionary scale than meat eating humans?
ah yeah, I guess I was pointing out the reason people are veggie sometimes, issues of morality etc. Speaking as a veggie for 18 years, I've never felt the need for tasting meat, but also know some people who do. Guess this is the reason there is a market in meat flavoured veggie products. I suppose the politically correct veggie angle would be that it is better to enjoy a taste of bacon by eating meat substitutes than to actually kill animals. A bit like if you're into guns its probably better to go to a shooting range or play Quake than go down your high street shooting people. Or something. I guess I go with the Gandhi line 'the world has enough for everybody's needs but not everybody's greed' ... but that's a whole other conversation... what was this /. thread originally? :-)))) . Nice talking with you.