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Just a few days ago, the Turkish media "Daily Morning News" published a news report saying that "35 Yemeni fishermen found ambergris called 'whale vomit' in the carcass of sperm whales floating in the Gulf of Aden, a seemingly inconspicuous stone-like object worth more than $1.5 million." Many netizens commented: "These fishermen are too lucky" and "this discovery can get rid of poverty".
Source: Global Chinese Network. Local fishermen pose with ambergris
What exactly is ambergris? Why is it so expensive?
Whales have so many magical places, whales do not spray water, ambergris is stone, whales also have "the most romantic death in the world"...
Debunking the rumors, I would like to share with you about whales on this special anniversary of June 8th.
"8 June, a day of remembrance for the oceans" Since the resolution of the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, since 2009, 8 June has been "World Oceans Day". The theme of World Oceans Day 2021 is "Oceans: Living and Livelihoods". Oceans cover more than 70% of the planet and 97% of the planet's total water resources. It is the source of our life, the oceans produce at least 50% of the earth's oxygen, it is also home to the development of the earth's biodiversity, and human beings and all other creatures on earth depend on the ocean for life.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="7" > whales are not fish</h1>
Whales, parts of the marine mammal Whale Lower Order, are collectively called whales.
Mammals: Warm-blooded vertebrates that breathe air through their lungs, so named because they can produce milk through their mammary glands to breastfeed larvae.
Whales are the largest creatures in the world. But different species of whales are also different in size, such as the Maui dolphin is only 1.7 meters long and 50 kilograms, while the blue whale can grow up to 34 meters and 190 tons.
Whales are divided into baleen whales and toothed whales. Baleen whales are toothless species in their mouths, but they are large, at least 6 meters, and they have two nostrils that spew out a column of water during ventilation. Baleen whale species are relatively small, with only 4 families and 15 species extant, and well-known members include humpback whales and blue whales.
The toothed whale is naturally a toothed whale, the toothed whale family has many members, there are 9 families and 75 species, this large family has many members, the body size difference is naturally relatively large, well-known members include sperm whales and dolphins.
With the study of marine science, whale strandings can be found all over the country, and the members of the cetaceans that have been found include 8 species of baleen whales, including fin whales, blue whales and humpback whales; including sperm whales, killer whales, bottlenose dolphins, and white-tipped dolphins, including 25 species of toothed whales.
However, although they have all appeared in Chinese waters, only some whales such as minke whales and humpback whales have been distributed in this area for a long time, such as gray whales are very rare, and some are occasionally found from the surrounding waters.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="15" > whale's close relatives were hippos, cattle, camels...</h1>
As early as the 1960s, scientists proposed that whales evolved from protogulates on land, but there was no conclusive evidence at that time.
It wasn't until 1977, when the University of Michigan paleontologist Ginger Reese found two pelvic fossils in Pakistan, that evidence of the whale's origin gradually surfaced.
Two years later, in northern Pakistan, the team found an incomplete skull with some whale-like features, while unearthing 50 million-year-old fossils of terrestrial mammals with ear features unique to whale fish.
In 1992, the U.S. team also found a largely intact skeleton in northern Pakistan, somewhere between modern whales and their road-dwelling ancestors, and researchers named it chocobo whale, meaning a whale that can both walk and swim.
At this point, it is enough to prove that the oldest and most primitive whales evolved from mammals on land.
Today, scientists have sequenced DNA to identify species closest to whales as even-ungulates, such as hippos, cows, camels, etc.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="22" > these rumors about whales are actually true! </h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="23" >01</h1>
The process of juvenile whale birth is not easy because it does not know how to use its lungs to breathe. If the baby whale head comes out first, it will be drowned on the first breath away from the mother; if the young whale tail comes out first, wait for it to leave the mother safely, then it is very necessary for the whale father to help like a "midwife", the first time to lift the baby whale out of the water, take it for the first breath.
In addition, the whale's behavior when breastfeeding is also quite amazing: the mother whale will spray milk into the mouth of the cub in the seawater, which is supposed to be mixed with seawater, but the baby whale will be able to automatically separate the seawater from the milk.
Usually a juvenile whale has a long nurturing period, most of which is more than 1 year, and some whales take 7-10 years to mature. However, after the nurturing period, they will become powerful divers.
Their body temperature is similar to that of humans, maintaining about 37 ° C, but their heartbeat rate is much lower than that of humans, with only 10 beats per minute. Some whale species can dive to extremely deep seabeds and stay warm in icy water thanks to their thick fat.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="28" >02</h1>
We often see whales spraying water on TV, and it looks as if they are playing with water, but in fact, it is a part of their breathing, and the principle is simple.
As mammals that also breathe through their lungs, whales do not inhale before diving, but exhale the gas in their lungs first. When large whales exhale on the surface of the water, they can spew out more than 1,000 liters of air per second.
Because the temperature in the whale's body is much higher than the temperature of the air on the horizontal plane, water vapor will form, and when these gases are cold, small water droplets will be formed, so it will form a "fountain" in our eyes.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="32" >03</h1>
Ambergris, a prestigious spice that sounds domineering, is actually derived from the intestinal stones of sperm whales.
Sperm whales like to eat squid, but can not digest the squid sheath, this hard inner shell will be stuck in the intestine, so the sperm whale will secrete a substance to wrap the inner shell, this mass of matter is pathologically called stone.
This mass of matter, with only a 1% chance of finding a suitable place in the sperm whale's body, gradually becomes larger. This enlarged substance is the prototype of ambergris.
When the time is right, the sperm whale is excreted by excretion, and when it is just excreted, it is softer and has a smell of, but as it floats in the sea, and then experiences years of wind and sun, it will gradually solidify to form the so-called ambergris.
The longer it floats, the longer it ages, the better the quality.
This process cannot be done manually, so it is all by luck or with cruel whaling to obtain ambergris. Scarce is precious, and ambergris naturally becomes a precious spice.
Although the organic rate of whaling is obtained, but the ambergris can not be taken out of the stomach of the sperm whale by "killing the chicken to get the eggs", on the one hand, the probability of finding the prototype of the ambergris in the sperm whale is only 1%, on the other hand, the ambergris that has not been polished by nature, its quality is very poor, it is equivalent to a piece of animal stone with a feces smell, obviously this stone will not have any value.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="40" >04</h1>
The most impressive thing about the whale is its death. Naturally, there are two kinds of whale deaths, one called whale fall and one called whale burst.
When the whale stranded, its body will begin to ferment, leaving the seawater, the temperature in the whale's body will gradually rise, because the intestinal functions stop, bacteria naturally began to multiply unscrupulously, less than 20 minutes can double the number, this process will also produce a lot of gas in the whale's body, so a huge time bomb was born, no one knows when it will explode.
In China, the most famous whale explosion incident was the sperm whale stranding incident that occurred in Tainan City, Taiwan Province in 2004.
At that time, people found that this sperm whale was stranded, so they thought of transporting it to the dissection factory for decomposition, which took a lot of time, manpower and material resources to carry this behemoth to the car, but they did not think that when transported to the bustling small night market, the sperm whale suddenly exploded.
The whole street was suddenly unclean, none of the exposed facilities were spared from contamination by internal organs, and the air was filled with a disgusting smell of corpses.
Later, when the whale ran aground again, people no longer wanted to transport it, but how to deal with it became a headache again.
So someone proposed that since you don't know when it exploded, you should simply blow it up, but in fact, in 1970, someone did it, and the sperm whale after the explosion flew around, and it was more troublesome to clean up than it directly exploded, which obviously did not work.
Stranded whales are still a natural problem that causes humans a headache and is not well solved. But another way whales die is called "the most romantic death in the world."
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="49" > whale fall, dedicated to the last romance of the sea</h1>
Not long ago, China's "Deep Sea Warrior" deep submersible carried the mother ship "Exploration One" to complete the first scientific expedition mission in 2020.
To everyone's surprise, scientists have achieved an important result in the process of this scientific expedition - the discovery of "whale drops" at a depth of 1600 meters in the South China Sea. The word whale fell quickly made it onto the search rankings, allowing more people to recognize this strange ecological phenomenon.
In an ecosystem, basic organisms are particularly important, such as the flowers, plants and leaves commonly found on the roadside, and only when they continuously convert solar energy into organic matter can animals gain the energy to survive.
The same is true in the sea, but it is still a little different from the situation on land. At a depth of 200 meters on the ocean floor, seaweed can act as a basic chain of marine life. But no matter how deep the seabed, it will not work.
Creatures living on the seabed, food resources are very poor, often can only rely on food debris floating down the sea surface, living a life of up and down.
However, the whale fell, which is regarded as "the last romance of the whale dedicated to the sea".
Whale fall is a very slow process, in the process of its slow descent, for the ocean of several kilometers deep, creatures of different depths can enjoy the gifts of whale fall. The researchers said that a 40-ton whale sinking to the ocean floor is roughly equivalent to organic matter that has naturally settled in the same area for at least 2,000 years.
The remains of whales are enough to keep many creatures of the oceans fed and fed for generations. The whole process is tightly sewn and interlocked, lasting decades or even hundreds of years. From a scientific point of view, whale fall has a unique and significant significance for maintaining the balance of marine ecosystems.
A whale falls, everything lives, which is probably why people call it "nature's most romantic death".
Whale fall is very important for marine ecology, but with the impact of global warming and human activities, the number of whale strandings has increased, the number of whales killed by humans has also increased, the number of cetaceans has dropped sharply, whale fall has decreased, and the balance of marine ecosystems has also been broken.
"If one day, cetaceans cannot survive in the ocean, this basically indicates that human society is about to be destroyed." A researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences said so.
Whale fall nourishes all kinds of marine creatures, may this literary and romantic word awaken more people to the ocean, the love and protection of marine life.
bibliography:
[1] "In Search of Early Cetaceans", CNKI.
The Origin and Evolution of Whales, CNKI.
[3] Whale, Endangered Marine Ecological Aircraft Carrier, CNKI.
[4] "Whale Fall, a Poetic and Tragic Existence", CNKI.
[5] "The Luxurious Smell of Ambergris", CNKI.
[6] "Whale Life and Whale Matter", People's Daily News.
[7] "Whale Fall, the Most Magnificent Rebirth on Earth", Xinhua Daily.
[8] "A Whale Falls and All Things Live", People's Daily.
[9] How Do Whales Breathe? Xinhua Net.