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That was a crazy read. This stuck out to me: >“Here’s what we don’t know about whale barnacles, at least with any certainty: just about everything else. Like,
by blamazon 5y ago
That was a crazy read. This stuck out to me:
>“Here’s what we don’t know about whale barnacles, at least with any certainty: just about everything else. Like, how do their larvae, no bigger than a grain of salt, find a migratory whale to grab onto in the first place? Once they locate one, how do they navigate around its gargantuan body—hundreds of thousands of times larger than theirs—to find their permanent homestead? “It just seems preposterous,” says John Zardus, a marine biologist at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.”
Further, the article points out that certain types of whale barnacles are shown to prefer certain types of whales. Nature is amazing.
- pvaldes 5y ago> Here’s what we don’t know about whale barnacles... how do their larvae, no bigger than a grain of salt, find a migratory whale to grab onto in the first place? Once they locate one, how do they navigate around its gargantuan body—hundreds of thousands of times larger than theirs—to find their permanent homestead?” Whale lice don't have swimming larvae. Like kangaroos they have pouches to incubate the eggs and hold the larvae, until they are able to live alone. They can move to other whales when whales mate EDIT: Nope, I'm mistaking one type of parasite for another, my bad. Barnacles use most probably chemistry to find other whales. Is interesting that they don't even mention the most interesting aspect of the whale barnacle life. Whale barnacles and whale lice are the fingerprints of the whales. You can identify one particular whale for years and years mapping the head patches made by its barnacles. Those islands of parasites are exclusive from each specimen in extension, number, shape and color. Is incredibly useful for studying them.