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I don't think the blue whales are "mostly extinct". Per their Wikipedia article, they are "endangered".

readthenotes1 4y ago
"mostly extinct" means "endangered in the environment unit if measurement
smcl 4y ago
Yeah we hunted them pretty horribly for a long time so their population now is a fraction of what it once was (10-25k vs ~250k). But since it became illegal to hunt them in the 1980s it seems like they're recovering slowly, rather than heading towards extinction.
- EntrePrescott 4y ago
  that figure in the low tens of thousands along with the menace of extinction just reminded me of an interesting thing about the demographics of another species of large animals (though not that large)… one that is already extinct: the Tyrannosaurus Rex: Apparently, the standing population of T-Rex during their existence is estimated to have been only in that ballpark, around 20000… and yet the estimation for the total number of T-Rexes to ever have lived is in the billions… just because T-Rexes have existed for such a long period of time. Of course, that was long before humans came along and killed everything Cf: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/04/15/how-many-t-rexes-were-there-billions/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/04/15/how-many-t-rexes-were-t... (edit: replaced "factoid" with "thing" after a dictionary lookup. What I meant was like "fun fact" but without the degree of certainty that I would require to call it a fact… but without implying likely falsehood as "factoid" apparently would)
  - smcl 4y ago
    That is a really interesting factoid, I hadn't ever really thought about how many might be kicking around at any given time. Cheers for sharing, I wish I could reciprocate but my brain is mush at the moment :D
  - henearkr 4y ago
    The difference is that blue whales are social animals, living in groups (whereas T-Rexes were probably solo hunters), and also that the living zone of blue whales are a large fraction of Earth oceans (whereas the article you mentionned applies to North America dry land, a much smaller area than the cold-to-temperate oceans). So, in the case of blue whales it is understandable that the low ten of thousands is not the healthy number of individuals that they used to be (hundreds of thousands).
JackFr 4y ago
The real problem with blue whales is that most people have almost no intuition for how big they really are. At the Museum of Natural History in NYC there is life size replica of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling in the Hall of Ocean Life and it’s simply astonishing that something that big could be alive. (I would liken it to shaking hands with a > 7’ tall person or seeing the giant redwoods in person. Intellectually you know they’re big, but in person it’s a little shocking.)

"mostly extinct" means "endangered in the environment unit if measurement

smcl 4y ago

Yeah we hunted them pretty horribly for a long time so their population now is a fraction of what it once was (10-25k vs ~250k). But since it became illegal to hunt them in the 1980s it seems like they're recovering slowly, rather than heading towards extinction.

EntrePrescott 4y ago
that figure in the low tens of thousands along with the menace of extinction just reminded me of an interesting thing about the demographics of another species of large animals (though not that large)… one that is already extinct: the Tyrannosaurus Rex: Apparently, the standing population of T-Rex during their existence is estimated to have been only in that ballpark, around 20000… and yet the estimation for the total number of T-Rexes to ever have lived is in the billions… just because T-Rexes have existed for such a long period of time. Of course, that was long before humans came along and killed everything Cf: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/04/15/how-many-t-rexes-were-there-billions/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/04/15/how-many-t-rexes-were-t... (edit: replaced "factoid" with "thing" after a dictionary lookup. What I meant was like "fun fact" but without the degree of certainty that I would require to call it a fact… but without implying likely falsehood as "factoid" apparently would)
- smcl 4y ago
  That is a really interesting factoid, I hadn't ever really thought about how many might be kicking around at any given time. Cheers for sharing, I wish I could reciprocate but my brain is mush at the moment :D
- henearkr 4y ago
  The difference is that blue whales are social animals, living in groups (whereas T-Rexes were probably solo hunters), and also that the living zone of blue whales are a large fraction of Earth oceans (whereas the article you mentionned applies to North America dry land, a much smaller area than the cold-to-temperate oceans). So, in the case of blue whales it is understandable that the low ten of thousands is not the healthy number of individuals that they used to be (hundreds of thousands).

JackFr 4y ago

The real problem with blue whales is that most people have almost no intuition for how big they really are. At the Museum of Natural History in NYC there is life size replica of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling in the Hall of Ocean Life and it’s simply astonishing that something that big could be alive. (I would liken it to shaking hands with a > 7’ tall person or seeing the giant redwoods in person. Intellectually you know they’re big, but in person it’s a little shocking.)