It blows the mind to think of what this whale has experienced in its ~130-year lifetime. Considering the number of times this magnificant animal has been shot at (with several impacts, the number of misses must have been impressive) it is an amazing feat to have lived as long as it did. Note that it never did escape that sorry fate. Considering the proven intelligence among whales one wonders what the bowhead thought of mankind.
Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3.5-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale’s age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.
“No other finding has been this precise,” said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Calculating a whale’s age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It’s rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the oldest were close to 200 years old.
The whale, which was nearly half a football field long, had a bomb lance fragment lodged a bone between the its neck and shoulder blade. The fragment was likely manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time, Bockstoce said.
I could make a crack about the life expectancy of a black man in an urban center but that would be in poor taste.
30,
How do you know that they don’t have conscious thought? Why is it absurd to think that a whale has memory of its experiences? Hell, even a dog has memories and a personality.
#31 – Smartalix,
I’m strongly with you on this one.
#30 – Erik,
How do you know humans possess conscious thought? It certainly isn’t shown by your post. Your post is right out of behaviorist psychology. You assume that if we can’t understand them, they can’t think. Here’s a newsflash for you. Life is a continuum on this planet. Some species are more intelligent than others. But, since we can’t even define relative intelligence in our own species adequately, what gives you the knowledge to declare that other species don’t have it?
Here’s one for you with a species more closely related to this whale than to us. Dolphins understand us when we speak. They understand us when we make gestures. They even get that a television image of a person making a gesture is in fact an image of a person making a gesture, a fairly difficult leap. They also pass the mirror test.
So, here’s my question for you: If dolphins understand us and we continuously, and not for lack of trying, completely and utterly fail to understand them, which of us is the more intelligent species?
So, how smart is a bowhead? I have no idea. How smart is a human? Ditto.
And, lastly, yes, there is a shortage of every species of whale.
#24 – RGB,
One key difference between those that still practice a hunter gatherer lifestyle and those that practice “totalitarian agriculture” is that, as Mr. Fusion points out, their lifestyle, while destructive on a scale not reached by any other extant species, is still far less destructive than ours. And, we have caused such degradation of the environment that they are unable to continue their lifestyle. So, there is a moral issue here.
32. “totalitarian agriculture”
“Term coined by author Daniel Quinn, Totalitarian Agriculture is a form of agriculture predicated on the notion that all food on this planet belongs to humans exclusively.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian_agriculture
You’re probably right. But I think the three guys who actually believe this recently joined the “Nazi Agriculture” group.
“we have caused such degradation of the environment that they are unable to continue their lifestyle”
Regardless, they’re doing their rightful best to get what’s left.
And I think we know too well what wins out when artificial rights meet environmental reality.
Polar bears are threatened with extinction (google polar bear extinction), yet native groups can exclusively hunt and guide hunters to kill them.
There are greater and lesser moralities.
RBG
Where is PETA on this issue? Shouldnt this be all over PETAs website. Why not?
You are so underinformed.
You better check yourselves, because you are wrecking yourselves!