A Fools Experiment

We are living amongst the time of giants.  The baleen whales are larger than any known dinosaur and ANY animal that has come before them. The Blue whale itself, is capable of weighing 180 metric tonnes (the same weight as 30 African elephants stacked on top of each other) and can be longer than a basketball court… But why is this so?  Many will tell you about how it has something to do with predator avoidance or how the restraints of gravity are significantly less restrictive in the ocean, but the most important reason for the whales’ size has something to do with the icy inhospitable continent of Antarctica...  The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is one of the most productive upwelling’s the world has ever seen. This, and similar upwelling’s found around the globe (and specifically around arctic areas), generate a humungous nutrient glut that creates masses of food for these mighty animals. The ocean has NEVER been quite as productive. But even this isn't enough: it ...

Travel back some 50 million years on planet earth. You find yourself in the Indo-Pakistan region of the relatively newly formed Himalayan mountain belt. Life has adjusted from one extreme to the other; the non-avian dinosaurs are distant memories preserved within stone and the earth is getting hotter. But teetering on the edge of a freshwater environment, the ancestor of all modern whales was taking its first tentative steps back into the water. You look around. Dense shrubbery gives way to a riverbank and resting on the edge of the slow moving water is an animal the size of a Labrador. It has four legs, an elongated snout with sharp teeth. It looks like a mix between an otter and a seal. This is Pakicetus . The Walking whale of Indo-Pakistan: the ancestor of all modern whales. Can’t you see the family resemblance between this animal and a Blue whale? Wait, seriously?! (Image by Roman Uchytel) You might exclaim… “A whale with four legs? What a loa...