Squid beaks from whale stomachs

[Steve O'Shea]

Hi all. Tintenfisch and I have just returned from a talk we gave on giant squid, giant octopus and other mysterious denizens of the deep, up country a bit. Whilst at the venue someone from the NZ Department of Conservation gave us a chilli bin of squid beaks (at least a thousand beaks) recently extracted (during autopsy) from the stomach of a stranded sperm whale (of length 13m, or ~ 40 feet). Therein were several (2 at least) giant squid beaks, and at least 4 (we haven't really looked at them in detail yet to give precise counts, and they still smell seriously evil and are covered in parasitic worms) of those belonging to Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni. Those of Mesonychoteuthis just leave those of Architeuthis for dead in the seriously evil stakes - they're considerably larger and CONSIDERABLY THICKER - almost capable of doing the 'cutting through cable' trick that you'll sometimes read about (with respect to Architeuthis).

In the months to come we'll try and describe a few of these beaks online for you (as a small project), as we try and reconstruct what species this whale had been eating, and where it had been eating them; it is really quite interesting stuff!! We also have the stomach contents of three pygmy sperm whales (Kogia) to examine, so the comparison might be of interest to people here.

Mesonychoteuthis is an Antarctic squid species (none is known from New Zealand waters, or at least none is represented in collections from NZ waters), so the sperm whale, stranding in subtropical waters, was likely feeding quite a bit south of New Zealand. I don't know the cause of death of the sperm whale, whether sick or disoriented, but will let you know as soon we find out.
Steve & Tintenfisch

 

[Fujisawas Sake]

Ye gods...

Wow, I'm sorry Steve... I read about it on the news here. While I understand that its good to get your hands on specimens, I don't envy you the task of seeing all those animals dead.

Let us know if you find anything interesting, okay?

John

 

[Jean]

Saw you on the news last night! When I calmed down after hearing that some lowlife had chainsawed off a jaw :x:x:x:x

Be interesting to hear what's in there!

J

 

[Emperor]

All very interesting stuff

Just a quick note as a lot of Japanese language-only pages get posted here - you can post a link directly to the translation by adding the URL to:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?lp=ja_en&url=

like this (from one of Clem's posts):

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babe...research.kahaku.go.jp/zoology/Beak/index.html

Someone passed that trick on to me today so I thought I'd share

Emps

 

[Clem]

Saw you on the news last night! When I calmed down after hearing that some lowlife had chainsawed off a jaw :x:x:x:x

To read a New Zealand Herald article about the whale stranding (and jaw poaching), click here.

Emps, thank you for letting people know how to route non-English pages directly through the translator. I was simply too lazy to work it out myself.

Clem

 

[Emperor]

Clem: Its not actually very clear as they jam a frame around things as I'm sure they'd rather use their site in its full glory - this way is more convenient

Steve: You said earlier:

Of particular note on the attached 3 images (with permission to use granted to us by Debbie Freeman of the NZ Department of Conservation) is the extent of scar tissue on the animal's head. Because of the regularity of spacing and linear nature of many of the scars it has been suggested that they are the result of inter-male aggression (that the scars are caused by the aggressors teeth); however, not all of those scars are that regular. Is it possible that the talon-like hooks on the Mesonychoteuthis arms and tentacle clubs are responsible for making these scars? There are a few Architeuthis scars there too (the round ones), and this animal had certainly eaten two Architeuthis quite recently.

Do you have any plans to take samples from whale skin to explore this aspect as it doesn't appear to have been much studied? I did find this picture:

http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/IMAGES/squid_whaleskin.gif

which is, I believe, from:

John Murray, Johan Hjort, (1912) The Depths of the Ocean. Macmillan, London:

http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/ocean-books/ocean-books-mn.html#murray-hjort:1912

but there doesn't seem an awful lot else on this (at least as far as my limit knowledge goes ).

I would imagine with all the captive cetaceans that there have been studies into scarring and the aging of scars (I would imagine younger scar tissue would looked stretched) and it could provide another line of investigation - a bit like cetacean forensics

Emps

 

[Tintenfisch]

While I understand that its good to get your hands on specimens, I don't envy you the task of seeing all those animals dead.

From the outside and, worse, inside... here's a rundown of what we've been up to. I imagine everyone's wondering what that funny smell is anyway. :?

On Monday the Department of Conservation, organizing the clean-up and burial of these animals, were still removing the jawbones (which go to the local Maori, except one being flown to New Zealand's National Museum to be displayed with the rest of the skeleton), and we did our first stomach retrieval... which is, really, an appalling process and a long one if you don't know the exact location of the stomach. Turns out the stomachs we examined in these whales were all in different locations (probably affected by rolling around in the surf, which side they were lying on, etc), anywhere from 'gassing out' at the mouth to right up in the ribcage to about midway down the abdomen. To find the first one, we had to follow the intestines, which are 215 m long, approximately the thickness of a human leg, and full of stuff you don't even want to think about. As it turned out, the stomach (second of three, where the beaks accumulate) was empty.
On Tuesday, however, we examined the stomachs of ten more whales (which is why you can probably smell us, wherever you are at the moment), and found anything from 5 beaks to half a bucketful, so we've collected some good data and increased the known sperm whale stomach contents in New Zealand elevenfold. There look to be some large cranchiid beaks in there, possibly Mesonychoteuthis but no enormous ones, and we won't know for sure until we sort them and examine them closely.
It was a fascinating experience, once you got beyond the tragedy of it, the revulsion at what you were actually wading through, and the smell.
Some photos...

 

[Tintenfisch]

More; these are of the insides, so not for the faint of heart.

 

[Jean]

eeewwwwwww

man .......I wish I lived closer I'da broken out my gummies!

J

 

[Steve O'Shea]

.... and just a few more. Last evening I had a shower, a bath (with detol), a bath (with soap) and then a bath (with every imaginable sweet-smelling concoction I could throw in there) ...... and I still reek!!

We got some pretty fantastic samples - enough to keep someone busy for a couple of years if they were to do the job thoroughly. Surely there must be someone out there in that big-old world that could come and work on these samples for a Masters degree. Funding is the issue right now - we have several applications in ourselves (for funding), and one about to go in on our behalf.

 

[Jean]

.... and just a few more. Last evening I had a shower, a bath (with detol), a bath (with soap) and then a bath (with every imaginable sweet-smelling concoction I could throw in there) ...... and I still reek!!

try something with lemon in it! It cuts most pongs! Maybe tomato juice would work........I believe it does for skunk smell!

J

 

[myopsida]

and just a few more. Last evening I had a shower, a bath (with detol), a bath (with soap) and then a bath (with every imaginable sweet-smelling concoction I could throw in there) ...... and I still reek!!

Steve
The trick is not to use hot water - that opens the pores & lets all that nice smell in. Look on the bright side - you're guaranteed a seat to yourself on the bus for a while! (more cold showers will help)

 

[Fujisawas Sake]

Hi,

This is a little off-topic, but Tintenfisch's bull picture was interesting. Don't mean to offend anyone, but why is the penis extended? Considering the mechanics of whale mating, is this normal for the death throes of a sperm whale?

John

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Hi John. We weren't there on day 1 so don't know whether the protrusion of the penis is 'normal'. What has (had) happened in the interim is that the animals started to bloat, and perhaps (perhaps!!!) the penis protruded from the belly (it did so on every animal; all 12 were male) simply because of a build up of gas/pressure inside.

It was quite a horrendous job cutting into the abdominal cavity of these brutes to get to the stomachs, as the they basically exploded when the cavity was first penetrated. It sounds barbaric, but there is so much information contained therein that it would have been equally criminal to have left them intact; you have to make the most of a bad situation.
Cheers
O

 

[Fujisawas Sake]

Steve,

Exactly. I mean, i've helped dissect a gray whale calf, and the damned thing burst open in an orgy of blood and... well, I'll leave the rest to your imagination. I was saddened by the loss of this beast, but to simply leave it there for the flies was also wrong. The amount of information you can get from a dead specimen means you don't have to go out whacking the live ones.

Sounds like quite an adventure...

John

 

[Emperor]

Saw you on the news last night! When I calmed down after hearing that some lowlife had chainsawed off a jaw :x:x:x:x

To read a New Zealand Herald article about the whale stranding (and jaw poaching), click here.

Sorry to resurect this thread but I saw this news article and it rang a bell - is there really such a demand for whale jaws?

Plea over missing whale bones

Zoologists are seeking the public's help as they try to discover how two jawbones disappeared from a 56ft whale washed ashore on an island.

The skeleton of the fin whale was removed from the beach on Coll, in the Inner Hebrides, earlier this month.

It was taken to the National Museums of Scotland (NMS) research facilities at Granton in Edinburgh - but the 12ft long jawbones are nowhere to be found.

The disappearance was described as "a most unusual zoological phenomenon".

NMS would not speculate on the possible fate of the bones, which weigh about 250kg.

Already dead

However, a spokesperson said experts were "intrigued" about where they had gone.

It is thought that the fin whale was already dead by the time it arrived on the beach at Coll at the beginning of February.

The operation to remove it from the beach saw the blubber and soft tissue removed from the skeleton, which was transported by truck and ferry to Edinburgh three weeks ago.

Finding these jaw bones would help fill a massive gap in our collection
Andrew Kitchener
NMS curator of birds and mammals

Staff at Granton will spend the next few weeks cleaning the bones before the whale joins the NMS research collections.

Andrew Kitchener, curator of birds and mammals, said that the NMS does not have a complete fin whale skeleton.

"Finding these jaw bones would help fill a massive gap in our collection," he said.

And he added: "The disappearance of these jawbones is a most unusual zoological phenomenon.

"We would be very grateful to anybody on Coll who might happen to stumble across them."

The fin whale is second only in size to the blue whale, the biggest mammal on earth.

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Plea over missing whale bones

Published: 2004/03/29 10:36:48 GMT

© BBC MMIV

Emps