Happy Thought for 7 July 2023

Have a Happy Thought:

You may have been hearing about orca attacking boats in the Mediterranean recently. (Did you know this has been going on, just slightly less frequently, not just since 2020, but there was a spate in 2017,  probably many in between, and, famously (ok a whale not orca), in the 1820’s.) 

No one quite knows why these attacks are happening, but one prominent theory is that… it’s just a fad.


Why would anyone think that orca go through fads, though?

Well, let’s just say that we know about some other things that were once “cool” amongst a group of cetaceans, that we’re pretty sure would now be like wearing jeans under dresses (oh wait, apparently that’s back now, too?):

 

  • In 1987, just for one brief, amazing summer, a pod of orca followed their matriarch in the fad of wearing dead salmon on their heads. Like hats.1

 

  • Dolphins off the coast of Western Australia like to put sponges on their noses. It helps keep them safe from sharp rocks and coral. Oh wait, did I mention that the males are apparently too cool for this, and it’s only the females that wear the sponges?2

Picture of a dolphin under water with a sponge covering its nose

The dolphins use basket sponges to stir up fish in sandy channels. Photo credit: Brooke Sargeant

 

  • Humpback whales songs get popular, spread around the world, and then fall out of fashion.3

 

  • Orca, again getting into high fashion, swim around with kelp wrapped around their dorsal fins. Humans (relatively unimaginative) call this kelping. We don’t know what orca call it.4

An orca plays with kelp by wrapping it around its dorsal fin above the surface of the water.

An orca kelping in the San Juan Islands. Photo credit: Maxx Kinert.

 

 

  1. https://www.iflscience.com/in-1987-orcas-had-a-fashion-of-wearing-a-dead-salmon-as-a-hat-69542
  2. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16235-dolphin-males-leave-sponging-to-the-females/
  3. https://www.science.org/content/article/whale-pop-songs-spread-across-ocean
  4. https://smea.uw.edu/currents/keeping-up-with-the-cetaceans-the-worlds-real-trendsetters/

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you, we love reading your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Thought for 30 June 2023

Image
Have a Happy Thought:     At the end of this week, possibly as you are reading this email, you get to have some separation between work colleagues and home life. (If you’re retired… well, I’m already jealous, so don’t @ me with a “ what is a week-end ” sort of quote).   But four very lucky people (yes, I’m somehow jealous of them as well), this week began a 378-day “week”, being shut in with their colleagues.   June 25 2023 was the start of the CHAPEA Mission 1 - a simulated Mars habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Centre. For just over one year, these four people will live as if they were on Mars, giving us valuable insights into logistics and human psychology. You can watch the emotional press-conference / shutting-the-door-behind-them , it’s actually very cute! Mission patch for Chapea-1 https://www.nasa.gov/chapea/mission1  with the mission motto Ad Martus A Domo and the participants' names Selariu, Haston, Jones and Brockwell.   Of course, this is far from
Read more

Happy Thought for 23 June 2023

Image
Have a Happy Thought:     The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is opening up the origins of the universe and very distant galaxies, stars and exoplanets to our understanding.   You’d think we’re only looking that far because we’ve figured out how everything works closer to us, right?   Wrong! Science is great because there’s always something new to explore and figure out. Here are just a few of the mysteries that remain for us to solve, or maybe just a few things you didn’t know, right here in our own solar system:   Q: What is our sun’s surface actually made of? A: We’re… not 100% sure, actually! We know mostly, by analysing the light that comes from the sun. You see, every time light passes through an object, including a bunch of gas, it changes the spectrum that we see – that object, or gas, absorbs some of the energy of light at specific wavelengths (or sometimes absorbs-and-re-emits-at-slightly-different-wavelengths). So astronomers can tell what gasses a sta
Read more

Happy Thought for 26 January 2024

Image
Have a Happy Thought: While some of our holiday breaks may be fresh in mind, others may be distant memories. Either way, I hope you’re entering 2024 with at least some positive energy. One way to hold on to that (or maybe create it if that’s what you need) may be to introduce frequent, but short, breaks into your day, ideally getting out into some blue- or green-space.   Image: A stump next to a tree-shaded pathway has had googly-eyes drawn onto it so it looks like a startled face. Picture by author. In fact, taking mini-breaks might benefit your physical health as much as your mental health! A recent study out of Columbia University in the US has found that taking frequent-but-short breaks, 5 minutes out of every 30, can have really impressive impacts on physical and mental health like: Blood sugar Insulin Blood pressure Mood Fatigue Cognitive ability  (apparently, I need this a bit, it took me three tries and spell-checker to spell cogni
Read more