What fathers in the animal kingdom can tell us about humans
When people talk about animal parents, often they are thinking about mothers. But the role of fathers in the animal kingdom is fascinating—and can tell us a lot about ourselves.
When people talk about animal parents, often they are thinking about mothers. But the role of fathers in the animal kingdom is fascinating—and can tell us a lot about ourselves.
Evolution
Jul 3, 2024
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It sounds like a crime show episode at sea: In late January 2024, federal regulators learned that a dead female North Atlantic right whale had been sighted near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The whale was towed to shore, ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 13, 2024
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Scientists have found a new non-invasive way to identify a deadly virus in dolphins that could be a testing breakthrough. For the first time, researchers at the University of Hawai'i Health and Stranding Lab have successfully ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 23, 2024
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Almost half of marine mammals around the UK are being poisoned by banned chemicals.
Environment
Dec 2, 2023
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In his new book "Eat, Poop, Die," UVM wildlife expert Joe Roman explores the fascinating lives of whales, seabirds, insects and other animals as they traverse their homes, from a few thousand kilometers of ocean to a few ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 22, 2023
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Both elegant and fierce, killer whales are some of the oceans' top predators, but even they can be exposed to environmental pollution. Now, in the largest study to date on North Atlantic killer whales, researchers in Environmental ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 11, 2023
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For decades, fish-eating killer whales in the Pacific Northwest have been observed harassing and even killing porpoises without consuming them—a perplexing behavior that has long intrigued scientists.
Plants & Animals
Sep 28, 2023
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Marine mammals—animals including whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sea otters, dugongs and manatees—are threatened by an array of human activities. Species such as the North Atlantic right whale, Rice's whale and Vaquita ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 24, 2023
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A trio of biologists and environmental scientists, two with the University of Fribourg and the third with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, has found that fully aquatic mammals, such as whales and porpoises, are very ...
A pair of paleobiologists with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History has found evidence of a long extinct herbivore marine mammal living in what is now the Skooner Gulch Formation in northern California. ...
Marine mammals are a diverse group of roughly 120 species of mammal that are primarily ocean-dwelling or depend on the ocean for food. They include the cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), the sirenians (manatees and dugong), the pinnipeds (true seals, eared seals and walrus), and several otters (the sea otter and marine otter). The polar bear, while not aquatic, is also usually considered a marine mammal because it lives on sea ice for most or all of the year.
Marine mammals evolved from land dwelling ancestors and share several adaptive features for life at sea such as generally large size, hydrodynamic body shapes, modified appendages and various thermoregulatory adaptations. Different species are, however, adapted to marine life to varying degrees. The most fully adapted are the cetaceans and the sirenians, which cannot live on land.
Despite the fact that marine mammals are highly recognizable charismatic megafauna, many populations are vulnerable or endangered due to a history of commercial exploitation for blubber, meat, ivory and fur. Most species are currently protected from commercial exploitation.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA