Tag: older content

There are many things that differentiate odontocetes or ‘toothed whales’ from mysticetes or ‘baleen whales. ’ The most obvious difference of course being that odontocetes have teeth and mysticetes have baleen. Coming in at a close second, however, is the fact that odontocetes echolocate while mysticetes do not. But, hold the boat folks:  this fact may not be a fact after all.  Just last year a team of scientists published an article in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters describing the first-ever recordings of something they termed “Megapclicks”: strange click sounds produced by humpback whales.

The Amazon river dolphin, otherwise known as the boto, is a freshwater river dolphin found in Southern America. The boto is often referred to as the ‘pink dolphin’, although not all individuals are pink. In fact, DCP learned this week at the Society for Marine Mammalogy’s Biennial conference that it is only the male botos that obtain a pink color, and that this is because of an accumulation of scar tissue.  The boto’s natural color is a bluish gray. Male botos engage in aggressive biting matches, which scar their skin, causing bright pink patches to appear.