by Matthew Cobb
Some rather sad pictures posted yesterday of a pair conjoined grey whale calves, found dead in a lagoon in Baja California. Grey whales give birth around this time of year. There’s a rather gruesome video, too. Grindtv.com has this:
Unfortunately, the twins discovered in Scammon’s Lagoon did not survive and most likely were miscarried. The the carcass is only about seven feet long, versus the normal 12 to 16 feet for newborn gray whales.
Alisa Schulman-Janiger, an American Cetacean Society researcher, pointed out that the twins were severely underdeveloped and wondered whether the birth or stillbirth might also have killed the mother.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZk1gI_KybM
Photos by Jesus Gomez, Farah Castillo and Gabriela Rodriguez.
Oh so sad about this.. but nice work from Jesus…
Jesus was able to copy fish. But apparently he still needs some training with whales.
Holy moly!!!
I wonder if twinning in whales is a rare event.
Conjoined twins would be even rarer.
My thoughts too. It could be the consequence of anthropogenic pollution, or even worse, of Fukushima.
So tragic. 🙁
Or maybe conjoined twins just happen once in awhile.
From what I read and was able to gather, this is a first find in that species of whales.
Must be Fukushima then. Or maybe GMO crops?
Fukushima is a likely candidate, but I don’t see where GMO crops come into the picture. Are GMO crops being massively grown in the Pacific?
Didn’t think so, yours was a silly comment, you can do so much better.
Come on vierotchka, if you are going to throw around “explanations” for this without one shred of evidence, go for something really fun like polar vortices, or the winter solstice, or the alignment of your head with Uranus!
😉
Yes my response was silly. Just poking fun at your comments.
In a most infantile way.
@moarscienceplz – so you also enjoy scatology, eh? Or maybe you’re a proctologist in desperate need of clients…
Well. They do live under water. What percentage of their births do we see? I suspect that all mammals and many other animals would by chance produce conjoined twins, maybe, roughly in the same percentages as humans.
The video commentary says “exceptionally rare” in Spanish.
The universe doesn’t care about whales any more than it cares about humans. But I find it sad.
The Universe is a psychopath… 😉
Poor whales. 🙁
Wow! Of course people know that the major way to make identical twins is when two embryos are organized from a single fertilized egg. There is a continuum of possible outcomes. The two embryos can develop within a single chorionic sac, and they may share a single placenta. If the early structures for the embryos themselves develop too close together, then they develop as conjoined twins. Most conjoined twins are joined ventrally, as these are, or they are joined more laterally.
I wanted to see what was known about twin births in whales. There is very little. One site mentioned that identical twins occur in ~ 1% of humpbacked whale births.
It’s because of Fukushima! How long before this becomes the latest “proof” that the ocean is radioactive?
vierotchka seems convinced.
I said it could be, not that it is. Please do not give meanings to my words that are not there.
Probably not, they said in the video that just like it happens with humans and domestic animals, it also happens in wild animals although it is very uncommon or exceptionally rare in whales.
There are many conspiracy theories and rumours about Fukushima making the rounds in social media and the internet in general, most of them are not true.
Here’s an interesting story about the Fukushima rumors:
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/09/02/are-your-days-of-eating-pacific-ocean-fish-really-over/
One good thing about all the fear-mongering: maybe enough people will stop eating Pacific seafood that the depleted stocks can recover a bit.
Hmm.. Good point.
They would be some of the not-so-lucky ones.
Whoever designed this universe, I’d like to have a word or three with about some damned slipshod quality control. Inexcusably inhumane and incompetent.
b&