Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
smithsonianmag.com
Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
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Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#2The American bison of the ocean (fertilizer). (well before we tried to kill all the bison).
Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#3I am not only awed by the size and bulk of whales, but also the sheer meatiness of shrimp. It seems like these organisms are > 90% meat. Why do they have so much meat? What do they need all that meat for?
Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#4I am not only awed by the size and bulk of whales, but also the sheer meatiness of shrimp. It seems like these organisms are > 90% meat. Why do they have so much meat? What do they need all that meat for?
Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#5I am not only awed by the size and bulk of whales, but also the sheer meatiness of shrimp. It seems like these organisms are > 90% meat. Why do they have so much meat? What do they need all that meat for?
Self preservation, ironically. They normally spend all day swimming around leisurely, but can do a tail flop to escape danger quickly. I say ironically (don't kill me if I'm misusing the word) because that same big abdominal muscle leads to creatures, especially humans, seeking them out for their meatiness.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caridoid_escape_reaction
Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#6I am not only awed by the size and bulk of whales, but also the sheer meatiness of shrimp. It seems like these organisms are > 90% meat. Why do they have so much meat? What do they need all that meat for?
I have a population of shrimp that have been breeding in my aquarium for quite some time now. They spend most of their time picking through detritus and otherwise managing the cleanliness of the rocks and sandbed. I'm curious if their 'meatiness' has something to do with how rapidly they grow and reproduce and the size of the clutches involved. A single female can have around 100 eggs or more attached to the underside of her belly, producing that many eggs has to require a decent amount of calories. Another hypothesis is that they appear to be detrivores, and aside from the snails co-habitating with them, they have very little competition for a seemingly endless supply of fish poop and plants to munch on. The variety I have are clear, so it's quite interesting to watch their inner workings as they eat and reproduce. Where you'd expect the "brain" to be, they have a stomach that is constantly engaged in some type of basic peristaltic motion that can pause itself when they are alerted or startled, unlike in humans where this is an autonomic process as far as I know.
Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#7A related article has an amazing fact: in the 1800s, humans killed as much whale biomass as all mammalian biomass alive today.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/11/whaling-...
Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#8"That’s because the more whales eat, the more they poop, releasing nutrients like iron into the ocean water to fertilize the growth of phytoplankton, which in turn serve as a primary food source in the marine food web."
Um, the whales are not creating iron. They are eating it and putting (some of) it back where it came from. This articles makes it seem like the more they eat the more iron is there.
A dead krill will release the exact same nutrients into the ocean - it's not necessary for it to be processed by a whale first.
"you might think that these hungry giants could make life in the sea scarcer. In fact, scientists theorize, just the opposite may be true."
This theory is not supported by the explanation given. I see no difference between krill eaten by a whale, and krill dying of old age - both will fertilize phytoplankton.
Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#9A related article has an amazing fact: in the 1800s, humans killed as much whale biomass as all mammalian biomass alive today. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/11/whaling-...
All wild mammal biomass. Domesticated mammal biomass is massive. In fact, humans + our livestock comprise 96% of mammal biomass: https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/17788/how-muc...
Re: Some Whales Can Eat Upwards of 16 Tons of Tiny Shrimp a Day
#10I am not only awed by the size and bulk of whales, but also the sheer meatiness of shrimp. It seems like these organisms are > 90% meat. Why do they have so much meat? What do they need all that meat for?
I have a population of shrimp that have been breeding in my aquarium for quite some time now. They spend most of their time picking through detritus and otherwise managing the cleanliness of the rocks and sandbed. I'm curious if their 'meatiness' has something to do with how rapidly they grow and reproduce and the size of the clutches involved. A single female can have around 100 eggs or more attached to the undersid…
Caton in Overshoot called humans a detritus species. Your very descriptive paragraph might be mined for metaphors. For example, in place of a brain, does humanity have going a peristaltic action connecting mines to landfills?