Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Crustacean Crust
Matt:
Why do whales have barnacles but dolphins, porpoises, and orcas do not?
-- Barnacle Bill the Sailor
Whale of a generalization, Bill, but sorta true. Barnacles are common on humpbacks and gray whales, but you'll sometimes find a few on a random porpoise or manatee or other marine mammal. Barnacles might spend their lives stuck to rocks and piers and whales, but they start out as free-swimming larvae. If they are lucky, they bump into something friendly at this stage, hang on, and set up housekeeping. So part of your answer is that whales swim much more slowly than other animals and are easier to latch on to and actually stick. And once they've stuck and matured, they can grow a whole colony of baby barnacles, like crabgrass spreading through a lawn.
Barnacles aren't parasites. While they might irritate a whale's skin, they don't feed on its body or otherwise do great harm. One species of barnacle is host-specific to gray whales. They've developed a nifty system of timing their reproduction to the whales' mating and birthing schedule at the Mexican lagoons, so a baby gray whale likely leaves for northern waters already infested with barnacle larvae. Individual whales can be identified by scientists according to the barnacle patterns they develop; the size of the patches also helps determine the age of a young whale.
Another advantage of whales over other sea mammals is that they spend all their time in salt water, the barnacles' favored environment. A manatee, for instance, has to travel into fresh water occasionally.
So what's in this deal for the whales? Nuthin'. What's in it for the barnacles? Plenty. When the little crustaceans are stuck to a rock, they have to wave their feathery arms around a lot to get enough water and plankton through their filters. If you're hitched to something that's constantly moving from place to place, you just hang out the feather filters and let the water pass through. Major conservation of energy.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Crustacean Crust
Crustacean Crust
Matt:
Why do whales have barnacles but dolphins, porpoises, and orcas do not?
-- Barnacle Bill the Sailor
Whale of a generalization, Bill, but sorta true. Barnacles are common on humpbacks and gray whales, but you'll sometimes find a few on a random porpoise or manatee or other marine mammal. Barnacles might spend their lives stuck to rocks and piers and whales, but they start out as free-swimming larvae. If they are lucky, they bump into something friendly at this stage, hang on, and set up housekeeping. So part of your answer is that whales swim much more slowly than other animals and are easier to latch on to and actually stick. And once they've stuck and matured, they can grow a whole colony of baby barnacles, like crabgrass spreading through a lawn.
Barnacles aren't parasites. While they might irritate a whale's skin, they don't feed on its body or otherwise do great harm. One species of barnacle is host-specific to gray whales. They've developed a nifty system of timing their reproduction to the whales' mating and birthing schedule at the Mexican lagoons, so a baby gray whale likely leaves for northern waters already infested with barnacle larvae. Individual whales can be identified by scientists according to the barnacle patterns they develop; the size of the patches also helps determine the age of a young whale.
Another advantage of whales over other sea mammals is that they spend all their time in salt water, the barnacles' favored environment. A manatee, for instance, has to travel into fresh water occasionally.
So what's in this deal for the whales? Nuthin'. What's in it for the barnacles? Plenty. When the little crustaceans are stuck to a rock, they have to wave their feathery arms around a lot to get enough water and plankton through their filters. If you're hitched to something that's constantly moving from place to place, you just hang out the feather filters and let the water pass through. Major conservation of energy.
Comments