The Himalayan Whale !

I wandered into an old news item that showed that a fossil had been found dated to 50 million years ago, of a himalayan whale that walked on land ! ofcourse at that time the land under the himalayas was near seas. that got me reading more on whales for sure !

Whales are related to Dolphins - and Hippopotamuses ! The blue whale can be a 100 feet long - that is 2.5 times as long as the utsav buildings are tall !

In a detailed genetic kinship study, researchers revealed that just like human societies, beluga whales appear to value culture and their ancestral roots and family ties. They demonstrated that related whales returned to the same locations year after year, and decade after decade, and hung out together.

Humpback Whale Songs are passed down over generations of whales. Songs emitted by the Humpback Whales can be heard over great distances, haunting melodies of radiant joy which fill the ocean.

A wonderful recent article talks of the intelligence of whales and dolphins :  Communication is so great in whales and dolphins that there is a strong possibility they are able to project an “auditory image” that replicates a sonar message they may receive. The process is a bit confusing, but here is a description : “So a dolphin wishing to convey the image of a fish to another dolphin can literally send the image of a fish to the other animal. The equivalent of this in humans would be the ability to create instantaneous holographic pictures to convey images to other people

With several sound producing organs, whales and dolphins are capable of conveying and receiving “20 times the amount of information as we can with our hearing - and vision. 

While it appears that whales and dolphins have incredible abilities to feel emotions, understand complex problems and communicate in ways we can’t even imagine, humans don’t seem to value this. Boycotting inhumane establishments, like marine parks (and zoos and circuses), should be our first step in helping them, but fighting to obtain personhood rights for whales and dolphins should be next.

The source of the image above : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_bowhead_whale_is_tail-slapping_in_the_coastal_waters_of_western_Sea_of_Okhotsk_by_Olga_Shpak,_Marine_Mammal_Council,_IEE_RAS.jpg

The source of the image on the top : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glacier_bay_(3733728870).jpg