Thursday, April 26, 2012

Whale Regression: and Evolutionary backtrack

The whale is a very interesting example of evolution because it is the largest animal on earth and is a fully aquatic mammal. This means that it gives birth to live young, warm-blooded, and breathes air. Like all the mammals, the whale's ancestors left the sea to develop land roaming tendencies and structures, only to have them go back to the see and lose all their limbs, and have thier vital systems completely reworked. This could be because of food needs or that they have always lived near the sea.  As you can see in the article, the fossils of the whales ancestors shed a very interesting light upon how an animal can change overtime, and what it keeps to remind itself of its past.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/4/l_034_05.html

1 comment:

  1. This got me thinking about whale birth and rearing of the young. How do they "cut" the umbilical cord? How do they breastfeed? The easiest site to access that I find pretty reputable is seaworld.org. So cool!

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