You've undoubtedly seen footage of large land mammals competing for mates: bighorn sheep smashing their heads together, elk locking horns, or elephants trumpeting and charging at one another. But when a female humpback whale goes into heat, males chase her in a race that soon escalates into an all-out brawl. And the BBC has captured it on film for all to see. Check it out.
Zygote Games (stuff for sale)
What we're reading
CC
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
« Friday Parasite: Lungworms – Thanks, Mom | Main | Science In Your Wine Glass »
October 26, 2009
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341d277753ef0120a67a29f0970c
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Humpback Whale's Race for Mates:
Comments
The comments to this entry are closed.
About Us
- Diane A. Kelly
Diane Kelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she studies the neural wiring and mechanical engineering of reproductive systems. - James L. Cambias
Jim Cambias writes science fiction and designs games in the lonely wilderness of Western Massachusetts.
Search
Awards
Science Blogroll
- Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
- badscience
- Creaturecast
- Deep-Sea News
- Download The Universe
- Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
- Laelaps
- Mystery Rays from Outer Space
- Not Exactly Rocket Science
- RealClimate
- Surprising Science
- Tetrapod Zoology
- The Beagle Project Blog
- The Cephalopodiatrist
- The Dispersal of Darwin
- The Finch and Pea | The Public House for Science…
- The Last Word On Nothing
- The Loom
- The Science Creative Quarterly
- The SpaceWriter's Ramblings
- Uncertain Principles
- What's In John's Freezer?
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Danna Staaf on Diane Natters On
- Greg on I'm Going to Tell a Story. In Public.
- finestpapers.com reviews on Your Humble Correspondent speaks at TEDMED
- best dissertation help on Your Humble Correspondent speaks at TEDMED
- weezie on Your Humble Correspondent speaks at TEDMED
- DianeAKelly on Your Humble Correspondent speaks at TEDMED
- anne vinsel on Your Humble Correspondent speaks at TEDMED
- Chuck Pell on Your Humble Correspondent speaks at TEDMED
- Katherine on Citizen Science: Identify Your Smallest Housemates
- DianeAKelly on Feeling Personal Boundaries, Crab Edition
WAY cool! I'm a little hesitant about the evolutionary just-so story at the end of the video, though. I mean, the winning male might father the strongest offspring, but we don't really know that, do we?
Posted by: Danna Staaf | October 28, 2009 at 01:59 PM
Its true. We dont really know what their babies will be like, even though its clear she thinks his success is sexy.
Posted by: DianeAKelly | October 29, 2009 at 09:38 PM