desalinating cetaceans

Factual Questions
1

hey all, a quick question. what with “water water everywhere…” and all, how do whales keep their salt/water balances?
jb

p.s.- any reports of someone ever encountering a plummetting whale dropping? crashing a sub into it or somethin… i dunno.

2

Hey, jb.

I know I’ve seen info about this before, but damn is it hard to find right now.

Here’s some things I found with a relatively brief Web search:

“…the fluid intake of marine animals (at least the carnivores) comes from the tissue fluids of their prey, which may be slightly hypotonic to sea water…” (from this site)

“Scientists speculate that mammals that live in the ocean obtain their water from the food they eat.” (from this site)

“Gray whales and all other whales get freshwater (drinking water) from their food. They will also get some of their drinking water from ocean water they swallow. The kidneys of whales extremely well developed and are able, to some extent, filter out the salt from the water.” (from this site)

I got the best results by searching google for “what do whales drink”.

IIRC, seals and otters also get their water from fish: The fish filter the water before the mammals eat them.

Jeyen

3

I remember encountering the qestion of “how do whales avoid dehydration” in Gardner Soule’s “The Mystery Monsters” back ith 1960s. Soule’s suggestions about his were absurd, a best.

As in the thread o whae’s milk, you can find the answer to this one in Victor B. Schaeffer’s “The Year of the Whale” (Natural History Press, late 1960s). He claims that the answer lies in whale kidneys – the whale’s body chemistry is unlike that of a land mmmal, and is geared tward eliminating a LOT of salt through the kidneys.

4

In my marine biology lab this past semester someone from the New England Aquarium visited with a seal carcass to lecture to us about marine mammals. While I was too busy sketching the dissection to take very good notes, I recall him talking about how the kidneys are very adept at filtering out high concentrations of salt. Wish I could have learned more on the subject, but marine biology in one semester gives you hardly a week of marine mammal study. :stuck_out_tongue: Plankton were in the spotlight most of the semester. Plankton. woohoo :wink: