Center for Whale Research: New Paper out in Science

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

New Paper out in Science

Dr. Emma Foster has provided a brief summery of her paper that recently came out in Science:
"Adaptive Prolonged Postreproductive Life Span in Killer Whales"

1. The key finding: We have discovered that female killer whales have the longest menopause of any non-human species so they can care for their adult sons. Our research shows that, for a male over 30, the death of his mother means an almost 14-fold-increase in the likelihood of his death within the following year.

2. The relevance/link to humans: Biologically-speaking, the menopause is a bizarre concept! Very few species have a prolonged period of their lifespan when they no longer reproduce. Like humans, female killer whales buck this trend and stop reproducing in their 30s-40s, but can survive into their 90s. The benefit of a menopause to both human and killer whale mothers is in spreading their genes. The different ways this has evolved reflects the different structure of human and killer whale societies. While it is believed that the menopause evolved in humans partly to allow women to focus on providing support for their grandchildren, our research shows that female killer whales act as lifelong carers for their own offspring, particularly their adult sons.

3. Why this is important: The menopause remains one of nature’s great mysteries. This research, which involved studying 36 years-worth of data, is the first ever study of its kind and is an exciting breakthrough in our understanding of the evolution of the menopause.

3 comments:

Gene PatentsDecember 18, 2012 at 2:29 AM
There is noticeably a bundle to find out about this. I assume you made certain good factors in features also.
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Floating CandlesApril 18, 2013 at 7:57 AM
This is exactly the information I was looking for. Thanks a lot for sharing.
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All Alaska Outdoors Fishing Lodge - Alaska Ptarmigan HuntingJuly 13, 2013 at 12:26 AM
Wonderful writeup. Kudos to you for bringing us wonderful contents.
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Some Background Information on the Orca Captivity Issue from Howard Garrett

"In 1965 a young male orca was captured in the town of Namu, BC. He was sold to Ted Griffin and towed in a pen to Seattle, where he was promoted extensively and made into a worldwide celebrity. Namu died after 11 months of captivity, but by then Sea World had captured their first Shamu from Puget Sound and the revenues from killer whale shows started a stampede to capture and sell orcas from Washington.

For ten years the captures were led by Don Goldsberry and Ted Griffin, who became public enemies after they tried to violently obstruct news coverage of their operations. They caught over 100 in that time, but claimed there were plenty of orcas here so the captures would make little difference on a population level. There was no science to dispute that until the mid-1970's when Canada and the US contracted with marine biologists Mike Bigg and Ken Balcomb, respectively, to conduct a survey to find out how many orcas there were in Washington and BC. They found only a few hundred, mostly north of Vancouver Island, meaning the captures had removed about a third of those resident to Washington waters.

Goldsberry, Griffin, Sea World, and the marine park industry in general disputed the scientists' findings and methods because they didn't like the results, and thus began a deep animosity toward field researchers on the part of the marine park industry. That dislike and disregard for the natural history of orcas that Bigg and Balcomb and many others revealed over the years became part of the marine park culture and continues to this day. The longevity of orcas, for example, was known from field research to be many decades longer than what marine parks told the public in their educational materials.

Needless to say, any organization that criticizes the captivity industry or that attempts to rehab, retire or release captives receives special scorn from the industry (which includes many people on Keiko's care team)."

"... and that's unfortunate because there could be some areas of agreement and cooperation if we could trust one another's information. But for those within the industry survival of the business is often more important than survival of the orcas, so rather than defend against these innuendos, unless there are disputed facts I'll try to give the background for the argument and leave it at that." From Comments by Howard Garrett

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

New Paper out in Science

3 comments:

Candace Calloway Whiting