Sleepless whales

Here is an Interesting article about dolphins and whales. Researchers just discovered that newborns and their mothers actually do not sleep at all during their first month. Also, female bottlenose dolpins have been discovered to teach their daughters to use marine sponges in order to protect their snouts while searching for prey on the rocky ocean floor. Since this is only passed on from mother to daughter, this is the first known example of tool-related culture in cetaceans. Read that article here.

Orcas

I was reading an article about killer whales (orcas) in the new National Geographic and learned some really interesting things that I wasn’t aware of. Like orcas can live 90+ years in the wild and one of the oldest orcas studied was born around 1911. And, orcas are divided into 3 categories: residents (which stay close to the coastline and eat only fish), transients (very fast swimmers, mammal hunters), and offshores (live out at sea). They might even be considered different species since the groups do not breed with each other and they even have their own dialects! These were the orcas studied off the western N. American coast so I’m not sure if if pertains to all killer whales. But its pretty interesting stuff. And here is a link to some other lesser-known facts about killer whales.