Bowhead whale cracks through ice in order to breathe
Fredrik Oscar Christiansen of Aarhus University in Denmark posted the footage on his Instagram page, describing it as 'an ice whale breathing through a hole in the ice.'
'This behavior happens frequently during the colder winter and spring months in Disko Bay, when few open water patches exist in the ice,' Christiansen told Discover Wildlife.
Bowhead whales reside almost exclusively in Arctic and subarctic waters and have become adapted to life in icy water, according to NOAA Fisheries. That includes being able to break through ice to take a breath.
They are so named because of their very large triangular skull that they use to break through heavy ice to come up for air, according to AZ Animals.
Christiansen told Discover Wildlife that a bowhead whale, also referred to as a polar whale and Arctic whale, can break through nearly 2 feet of ice.
Bowhead whales can grow up to 62 feet and weigh up to 200,000 pounds.
Christiansen, who is studying the effects between climate change and how much these mammals are eating, uses a drone to film the huge creatures.
Bowhead whales are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Conservation Act in 1970 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and are listed as depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Bowhead whale cracks through ice in order to breathe
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Climate change and aerosol pollution made drought inevitable in the US Southwest: Study
The combined effects of climate change and air pollution have led to direct declines in precipitation in the U.S. Southwest, making drought inevitable, a new study has shown. These circumstances, which began taking hold in about 1980, are likely here to stay as the planet warms, according to the study, published on Wednesday in Nature Geoscience. Its authors attributed this decades-long trend toward less precipitation to La Niña-like conditions, weather patterns that lead to cooler surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Even if El Niño-like conditions had prevailed instead, the Southwest would not have experienced a corresponding surge in rainfall, the researchers found. 'There's a uniform warming trend because of historical climate change, as well as emissions from anthropogenic aerosols, that both create a certain circulation pattern over the North Pacific,' said lead author Yan-Ning Kuo, a doctoral student at Cornell University, in a statement. 'Those two factors prevent the precipitation for the Southwestern U.S. from increasing, even under El Niño-like trends,' Kuo added. The researchers drew their conclusions by abandoning popular climate models that they said in recent years have not accurately reflected sea surface temperatures as observed in real time. Instead, they designed their own simulations in which they could insert data from satellites and statistical models, and thereby isolate the impact of each contributing factor. The post-1980 period in the U.S. Southwest exhibited the fastest soil-drying among past and future periods of similar lengths — a result that the authors attributed to human-induced warming and a decline in precipitation. Even in a simulation of El Niño-like trends, the authors identified a tendency toward precipitation decline, counter to what they described as a 'canonical El Niño teleconnection,' or the relationship among weather patterns spanning the Pacific. That 'unintuitive yet robust circulation change' is rooted not only in warming, but also in the radiative effects of manmade aerosol pollution, according to the study. Co-author Flavio Lehner, an assistant professor in Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell, said in a statement that this change points to a bigger shift in the so-called teleconnection that spans the Pacific Ocean. 'These external influences really modulate that relationship, so it doesn't behave exactly how we expect it to behave,' Lehner added. While emission from vehicles and industry will likely decrease as countries in East Asia make air quality improvements, Lehner noted that warming temperatures could offset this positive momentum. These gains, in other words, are 'unlikely to substantially alleviate the currently projected future drought risk,' according to the study. 'The warming is going to continue as far as we can tell,' Lehner said. 'That will gradually outweigh those benefits, as a warmer atmosphere tends to be thirstier, gradually drying out the Southwest,' he added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Orcas are bringing humans gifts of food – but why?
When researcher Jared Towers set up his cameras underwater to observe a pair of killer whales, he saw something strange. One of the orcas, a juvenile female, 'approached a camera I had in the water to film her younger brother and then opened her mouth and let out a dead seabird,' Towers, the executive director of Bay Cetology, a Canadian team of marine biologists based in Alert Bay, British Columbia, told CNN. She closed her mouth, paused, apparently watching for Towers' reaction and hung in the water while the dead seabird floated up above her. Then, after a few seconds, she rolled around towards the camera and swallowed the bird again. A few years later, Towers saw another young female killer whale displaying the same behavior – this time, however, the orca 'dropped a freshly killed harbor seal pup right beside my boat.' Towers discussed these incidents with his colleagues around the world, discovering that they too had been gifted food by killer whales. When he collated the instances, he found 34 cases of killer whales presenting humans with food between 2004 and 2024. He and his colleagues laid out their findings in a paper published recently in the Journal of Comparative Psychology where they attempt to unravel the reasons why killer whales might be doing this. Perhaps, they hypothesized, the killer whales are curious and exploring how humans will react to a gift. Maybe they are playing, though they largely discount this theory because whales of all ages, rather than just juveniles, provisioned food. Or, perhaps it is something more sinister – killer whales have been known to use prey to attract other species and then kill them, but there is no record of orcas ever killing humans in the wild. 'I don't think it's easy to suggest there is one reason for this behavior because there are underlying mechanisms and proximate causes,' Towers said. 'The main underlying mechanism is simply that they can afford to offer us food and the main proximate cause may be that they are doing so as a way to explore and subsequently learn more about us.' In all but one of the cases documented, the killer whales initially waited for a response from the humans before most of them retrieved the food, though some simply abandoned it and some even tried to gift it again. The humans ignored the food almost all the time; they took it only four times and in three of those cases, they threw it back into the water afterward. Pets bring their owners gifts – think of the dead mice or birds that cats leave outside the door – and animals have been observed giving gifts to each other. But until now, there have been barely any recorded cases of wild predators giving gifts to humans, aside from a few instances of false killer whales – a species of dolphin – and leopard seals offering people food. 'In a way, it's not surprising, because… everybody who's on the water with (killer whales) has experienced how inquisitive and curious they are and have had interactions where you know there's something going on between us and them,' Hanne Strager, a researcher and author who wrote 'The Killer Whale Journals,' who wasn't involved in the study, told CNN. Killer whales are one of the most intelligent animals; only humans have a larger brain relative to their body size, according to the study. And they kill much larger animals relative to their own body size than other whales and dolphins, meaning they can have more food to share around. They are also believed to have spindle neurons in their brains – a type of neuron known to be associated with empathy – said Philippa Brakes, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Exeter specializing in whales and dolphins who wasn't involved in the study. While she added that determining motivation is difficult 'because we can't interview them,' she suggested to CNN that it could be 'altruistic' or just a 'basic biological function' mimicking 'something you might do to a juvenile.' The researchers found that it didn't matter where in the world the whale was or whether it was male or female, a calf, a juvenile or adult – they all displayed this behavior. It fits into a wider pattern of killer whales often initiating interactions with humans and boats, offering further insight into their lives. And Towers hopes it serves as a reminder that 'while our species is obviously more technologically advanced than any other on the planet, we do share it with other highly evolved species whose welfare must be considered in our actions.' Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex's Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
How scientists discovered toxic algae blooms are increasing in the Arctic
Harmful algae blooms have been rapidly producing in a place previously too cold to host the toxin: the Arctic. And climate change over the last several decades is to blame, according to new research. Scientists have found a link between rising ocean temperatures and an increasing amount of toxins from algae blooms entering the marine food chain by analyzing the feces of bowhead whales in the Arctic, according to a paper published Wednesday in Nature. MORE: Toxin detected in Lake Erie weeks earlier than ever before, NOAA says Collaborations with native tribal communities in the Arctic helped researchers in their findings, said Kathi Lefebvre, a research biologist for NOAA fisheries at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle and lead of the Wildlife Algal Toxins Research & Response Network (WARRN-West). Researchers at WARRN-West have received fecal samples from 205 bowhead whales from the indigenous groups that were collected by either subsistence harvesting or found stranded in an unusual mortality event in the Beaufort Sea over the past 19 years, which put them in a unique position to monitor the progression of harmful algal blooms on the West Coast of North America, Lefebvre, lead author of the study, told ABC News. By studying the samples, the biologists could look at algal toxin concentrations in the food web, Lefebvre. The krill and copepods that ingest the toxins are then eaten by the bowhead whales, which are filter feeders. Over the past century, sea surface temperatures in the region have been rising, causing the amount of sea ice to shrink significantly. The warmer waters combined with more open water is leading to the higher concentrations of at least two algal toxins: Alexandrium, which are dinoflagellates that produce saxitoxin -- a neurotoxin that can cause Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning; as well as domoic acid, which is produced by Pseudo-nitzschia, a needle-like group of single-celled algae, and causes amnesic shellfish poisoning, according to the study. "We know from laboratory studies that these algae grow faster in warmer conditions," Lefebvre said. "There's more light because the open water is there and the ice is not reflecting the light." MORE: How humpback whales are playfully communicating with humans, according to scientists The cells have always been present in low concentrations in the Arctic, but the potential blooms are now larger, longer lasting and more toxic, Lefebvre said. Alexandrium drops cyst-like seeds that lay dormant in the sediments until conditions are right to produce. "So seeds have been dropping from these Alexandrian cells for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and these seeds need a certain temperature to be able to germinate," she said. MORE: What to know about the toxic algae bloom killing marine life in Southern California In the past, the bottom waters of the Arctic have been too cold for the cysts to germinate, but as the ocean warms, conditions are becoming ripe for reproduction. This is the first study of its kind to quantitatively show a direct link between climate change, sea ice loss and harmful algal bloom concentrations in the food web, Lefebvre said. The Arctic tribal communities that collected the samples are still fully reliant on marine resources for subsistence, Lefebvre said. "Marine resources are utilized for survival, for cultural practices, for economic well being, etc.," she said. "They've been doing this for thousands of years." In most places around the world, there are protections in place to test for these toxins for commercial seafood. But in the "vast remote" regions of the Arctic, such testing would be difficult to conduct on a regular basis, Lefebvre said. The communities harvest everything from clams, crabs, sea birds and anemones. "We're finding these toxins in all of these species," Lefebvre said. MORE: 'Demonic' sea lion reports spark concerns about toxic algae on California coast It is unclear how many whales in the Arctic have died as a result of harmful algae blooms, but walrus populations in the region, which feed on clams found at the bottom of the ocean, have been likely dying off as a result, Lefebvre said. Lefebvre has been studying harmful algae blooms for her entire career and was involved in the first-ever study in 1998 that found domoic acid was impacting marine mammals in Central California. Ever since, dozens to hundreds of marine animals have been documented to suffer from domoic acid poisoning every year, Lefebvre said. Southern California is currently recovering from its worst harmful algal bloom event, which impacted more than 1,000 marine animals overall since it began earlier this year, according to the Marine Stranding Network.