5 ms·

A New species of whale has been discovered off the western coast of Mexico

119 points by williamsharris 6y ago

le_didil 6y ago
the docker whale
- natchy 6y ago
  I was thinking “yo mama”
- zanderz 6y ago
  Whaley McWhaleface
idclip 6y ago
My sympathies.
mrfusion 6y ago
Is this due to warming oceans? Sad.
HenryKissinger 6y ago
Don't tell the Japanese.
jolmg 6y ago
> The experts claim to easily be able to confirm, based on morphology and acoustics, that the whales are a new species That's pretty cool. I would have thought that confirming you've seen something that no-one else on the planet has would be a somewhat difficult task. I wonder if there's like a world-recognized central database where this morphology and acoustics data of all species are organized for easy comparison. > These samples were taken as eDNA - a new, fancy technique in which gallons of the surrounding water is captured and filtered for bits of DNA which can then be cross-checked against the DNA of known species. Also pretty cool. I didn't expect them to leave so many pieces of themselves in their wake for something like this to be possible.
- Zenst 6y ago
  Been a lot of headway in the past decade in Passive Audio Monitoring, which is opening up a whole new view of the environments, like the sea. The whole aspect of cheaper tech to make such a set-up is also opening this realm up more to civilian use. https://www.pamguard.org/ https://www.pamguard.org/ https://www.wwf.org.uk/project/conservationtechnology/acoustic-monitoring https://www.wwf.org.uk/project/conservationtechnology/acoust...
  - readicculus 6y ago
    That and ai, manually combing through 50tb of audio data was previously not possible. Have a colleague who just finished up a project detecting these sorts of signals using CNNs, forget what species he was looking at, but results were quite good.
- Isamu 6y ago
  According to Wikipedia there are only 89 species of cetaceans, including dolphins and porpoises, so it is a short list to compare with.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I would have thought that confirming you've seen something that no-one else on the planet has would be a somewhat difficult task It would be. But confirming that what you've seen doesn't fit anything that has been described and categorized as a species, rather than that no one has ever seen it before, is a lot easier.
keiferski 6y ago
If you ever get a chance to read Moby Dick, you will both a) read one of the greatest works of American literature and b) learn more about the biology and behavior of whales and the 19th-century whaling industry than you can possibly imagine. Great book.
- busfahrer 6y ago
  I was about to post that I recently read it and felt all smug that they didn’t even know all the species of whale back in 1851. So much for that! But of course I wholeheartedly second the recommendation.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Chapter 32 (Cetology) is excellent. In it, the narrator explains the contemporary scientific understanding of whales and describes all their varieties then known. My favorite bit is the part where he explains the numerous differences between whales and fish (they have lungs, are warm blooded, they breast feed, have eyelids, etc.) The narrator explains that men of science have decided whales are not fish for these reasons. Then the narrator delightfully argues that despite all these differences, fish are animals that live in the water, and therefore whales are fish. I love this; it is common knowledge today that 'whales aren't fish' but few ever stop to think twice about that. There is no contesting that whales are surely mammals, but who says some mammals can't be fish? In the traditional biological nomenclature, 'fish' is a paraphyletic classification with arbitrarily excludes tetrapods (those lobe-finned fish that climbed out of the sea and became the four limbed animals we see today, including ourselves.) Why does fish exclude tetrapods? For cultural reasons clearly, it seems obvious to us that humans, dogs, lizards, birds, etc are not 'fish', because they lack the distinctly fishy quality of living in the water. So we say the tetrapods, the fish that left the water, are no longer fish. But some tetrapods returned to the water, regaining that distinctly fishy attribute. These are the whales. Tetrapods are not fish because they aren't aquatic, but whales are tetrapods which are aquatic, and I therefore declare them fish. (And in the cladistic system of biological classification, we are fish too.) Incidentally, when you make this sort of argument people tend to get pretty cross. It seems important to many people that whales not be called fish. Why is this? Is it because they think people will empathize with whales more if their mammalian nature is emphasized and their fishy nature is denied? Probably they're right about that, but it's hardly a scientific argument. Then again, 'fish' is hardly a much of a scientific classification since it has an exception carved out of it to accommodate our cultural 'knowledge' that people are 'not fish'.
Exmoor 6y ago
Beaked Whales are fascinating creatures that most people don't even know exist. I'm not even remotely surprised that a new species would be discovered, given the little that humans know about even the more common species' range and behavior. I was lucky enough to see a group of probable beaked whales on a cruise off the Pacific coast several years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaked_whale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaked_whale
- sradman 6y ago
  Exactly, very cool but unsurprising. The Wikipedia article starts: > Beaked whales are a group of cetaceans noted as being one of the least known groups of mammals because of their deep-sea habitat and apparent low abundance. Only three or four of the 22 species are reasonably well-known. Field biology will no doubt benefit from the current revolution in low cost mobile sensors, ML/DL silicon, autonomous vehicles, and DNA sequencing. We live in interesting times.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    I wonder if more is known about whales by the US Navy, but kept classified because the data comes from military sonar networks.
leahey 6y ago
This is going to be trotted out as evidence of the plausibility of Bigfoot for generations to come.

le_didil 6y ago

the docker whale

natchy 6y ago
I was thinking “yo mama”
zanderz 6y ago
Whaley McWhaleface

idclip 6y ago

My sympathies.

mrfusion 6y ago

Is this due to warming oceans? Sad.

HenryKissinger 6y ago

Don't tell the Japanese.

jolmg 6y ago

> The experts claim to easily be able to confirm, based on morphology and acoustics, that the whales are a new species That's pretty cool. I would have thought that confirming you've seen something that no-one else on the planet has would be a somewhat difficult task. I wonder if there's like a world-recognized central database where this morphology and acoustics data of all species are organized for easy comparison. > These samples were taken as eDNA - a new, fancy technique in which gallons of the surrounding water is captured and filtered for bits of DNA which can then be cross-checked against the DNA of known species. Also pretty cool. I didn't expect them to leave so many pieces of themselves in their wake for something like this to be possible.

Zenst 6y ago
Been a lot of headway in the past decade in Passive Audio Monitoring, which is opening up a whole new view of the environments, like the sea. The whole aspect of cheaper tech to make such a set-up is also opening this realm up more to civilian use. https://www.pamguard.org/ https://www.pamguard.org/ https://www.wwf.org.uk/project/conservationtechnology/acoustic-monitoring https://www.wwf.org.uk/project/conservationtechnology/acoust...
- readicculus 6y ago
  That and ai, manually combing through 50tb of audio data was previously not possible. Have a colleague who just finished up a project detecting these sorts of signals using CNNs, forget what species he was looking at, but results were quite good.
Isamu 6y ago
According to Wikipedia there are only 89 species of cetaceans, including dolphins and porpoises, so it is a short list to compare with.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I would have thought that confirming you've seen something that no-one else on the planet has would be a somewhat difficult task It would be. But confirming that what you've seen doesn't fit anything that has been described and categorized as a species, rather than that no one has ever seen it before, is a lot easier.

keiferski 6y ago

If you ever get a chance to read Moby Dick, you will both a) read one of the greatest works of American literature and b) learn more about the biology and behavior of whales and the 19th-century whaling industry than you can possibly imagine. Great book.

busfahrer 6y ago
I was about to post that I recently read it and felt all smug that they didn’t even know all the species of whale back in 1851. So much for that! But of course I wholeheartedly second the recommendation.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bigbubba 6y ago
Chapter 32 (Cetology) is excellent. In it, the narrator explains the contemporary scientific understanding of whales and describes all their varieties then known. My favorite bit is the part where he explains the numerous differences between whales and fish (they have lungs, are warm blooded, they breast feed, have eyelids, etc.) The narrator explains that men of science have decided whales are not fish for these reasons. Then the narrator delightfully argues that despite all these differences, fish are animals that live in the water, and therefore whales are fish. I love this; it is common knowledge today that 'whales aren't fish' but few ever stop to think twice about that. There is no contesting that whales are surely mammals, but who says some mammals can't be fish? In the traditional biological nomenclature, 'fish' is a paraphyletic classification with arbitrarily excludes tetrapods (those lobe-finned fish that climbed out of the sea and became the four limbed animals we see today, including ourselves.) Why does fish exclude tetrapods? For cultural reasons clearly, it seems obvious to us that humans, dogs, lizards, birds, etc are not 'fish', because they lack the distinctly fishy quality of living in the water. So we say the tetrapods, the fish that left the water, are no longer fish. But some tetrapods returned to the water, regaining that distinctly fishy attribute. These are the whales. Tetrapods are not fish because they aren't aquatic, but whales are tetrapods which are aquatic, and I therefore declare them fish. (And in the cladistic system of biological classification, we are fish too.) Incidentally, when you make this sort of argument people tend to get pretty cross. It seems important to many people that whales not be called fish. Why is this? Is it because they think people will empathize with whales more if their mammalian nature is emphasized and their fishy nature is denied? Probably they're right about that, but it's hardly a scientific argument. Then again, 'fish' is hardly a much of a scientific classification since it has an exception carved out of it to accommodate our cultural 'knowledge' that people are 'not fish'.

Exmoor 6y ago

Beaked Whales are fascinating creatures that most people don't even know exist. I'm not even remotely surprised that a new species would be discovered, given the little that humans know about even the more common species' range and behavior. I was lucky enough to see a group of probable beaked whales on a cruise off the Pacific coast several years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaked_whale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaked_whale

sradman 6y ago
Exactly, very cool but unsurprising. The Wikipedia article starts: > Beaked whales are a group of cetaceans noted as being one of the least known groups of mammals because of their deep-sea habitat and apparent low abundance. Only three or four of the 22 species are reasonably well-known. Field biology will no doubt benefit from the current revolution in low cost mobile sensors, ML/DL silicon, autonomous vehicles, and DNA sequencing. We live in interesting times.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  I wonder if more is known about whales by the US Navy, but kept classified because the data comes from military sonar networks.

leahey 6y ago

This is going to be trotted out as evidence of the plausibility of Bigfoot for generations to come.