{"id":12203,"date":"2022-08-11T16:04:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-11T23:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12203"},"modified":"2022-08-20T16:06:05","modified_gmt":"2022-08-20T23:06:05","slug":"when-dead-whales-are-good-whales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2022\/08\/11\/when-dead-whales-are-good-whales\/","title":{"rendered":"When Dead Whales Are Good Whales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/nautil.us\/humans-are-overzealous-whale-morticians-22850\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from Nautilus<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Humans Are Overzealous Whale Morticians<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>We hastily dispose of dead whales, ignoring the ecological significance of their carcasses<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>BY BEN GOLDFARB<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/image-13.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/image-13.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12204\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-13.png 800w, https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-13-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-13-768x461.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>When, at the dawn of the 19th century, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traversed western North America, they encountered a wondrous bestiary: the \u201cfleet and delicately formed\u201d coyote, the \u201cbear of enormous size\u201d which we call the grizzly. Yet few creatures impressed them more than the\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu\/item\/lc.jrn.1806-02-16\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cBuzzard or Vulture\u201d<\/a>\u00a0their party captured near the mouth of the Columbia River. The bird was massive, more than nine feet from wingtip to wingtip, and garish, with an \u201ciris of a pale scarlet,\u201d a \u201cpale orrange [sic] Yellow\u201d head, and feathers of \u201cGlossy Shineing black.\u201d Just as striking was the bird\u2019s diet. \u201c(W)e have Seen it feeding on the remains of the whale and other fish which have been thrown up by the waves on the Sea Coast,\u201d Clark reported. Marine creatures, he added, \u201cconstitute their principal food.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That Lewis and Clark first encountered a California condor by the sea was no coincidence. Once, condors soared across much of the continent, merrily scavenging dead ground sloths, mammoths, and glyptodonts. When human hunters wiped out these giant herbivores during the Pleistocene, condors nearly went extinct themselves. But they never quite vanished. Instead, they survived along the Pacific Coast, feasting on the last megafauna carcasses still available:\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.0508529102\" target=\"_blank\">marine mammals<\/a>, particularly the blue, humpback, and gray whales who migrate along North America\u2019s western rim.<sup>1<\/sup>\u00a0That we know\u00a0<em>Gymnogyps californianus<\/em>\u00a0as the California condor\u2014as opposed to, say, the Kansas condor\u2014is the nomenclatural legacy of dead cetaceans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/nautil.us\/humans-are-overzealous-whale-morticians-22850\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at Nautilus<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from Nautilus Humans Are Overzealous Whale Morticians We hastily dispose of dead whales, ignoring the ecological significance of their carcasses BY BEN GOLDFARB When, at the dawn of the 19th century, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traversed western North America, they encountered a wondrous bestiary: the \u201cfleet and delicately formed\u201d coyote, the \u201cbear of enormous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}