PacMam Podcast

Join Pacific Mammal Research (PacMam) scientists to learn about different marine mammals! We discuss a little about the biology, behavior and fun facts about each species. Have fun and learn about marine mammals with PacMam!      

This episode: the pantropical spotted dolphin  

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Culture is not unique to humans. This idea is becoming increasingly more accepted, and researchers are finding evidence of culture in many different species, including marine mammals. From tool use, to foraging strategies and dialects, there is evidence of social learning and transmission of information between individuals and through generations, which is the basis for culture. Sperm whales are a wonderful example of multilevel cultural society, with distinct vocal characters (akin to dialects) and nearly permanent social units that interact with other social units in their range. This paper looks at if the vocal characteristics they have constitute a symbolic marker for a group of individuals that the whales can use to identify themselves, but also other whales. Do they use this as a cultural marker defining one group from the next.  Think of clothing styles, accents, and body modifications in humans that serve the same purpose. Do sperm whales use specific vocal calls to identify members of their own clan, vs. members of others?  Come learn what they found and how amazing the culture of sperm whales is!

Paper is open access: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2201692119

Ted talk by Hal Whitehead on whale culture mentioned in the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uyGXoMaXns

Join Pacific Mammal Research (PacMam) scientists to learn about different marine mammals each episode! We discuss a little about the biology, behavior and fun facts about each species. Have fun and learn about marine mammals with PacMam!

This episode: The Walrus

We are what we eat...that is more than just a metaphor. The food we eat gets incorporated into our body tissues. This allows us to learn about what an animal eats, not just by observing them, or looking through their poop, but by sampling tissues like skin.  This is particularly important for animals where it is hard to observe exactly what they are eating, or getting their poop, like many marine mammals. By using skin/blubber samples from biopsy darting researchers can look at the stable isotopes of Carbon and Nitrogen.  Every element has a certain number of istopes, which are naturally occurring variants of each element that differ in the number of neutrons in the atom. They occur in particular ratios at different trophic levels (level of the food chain) and regions. By looking at these istopes researchers can determine what and where an animal has eaten. In this paper researchers are looking at Eastern Pacific Gray whales (on the U.S. West Coast). Previously it was thought that they only ate in the Arctic, and did not eat at their breeding grounds in Baja California, Mexico. But observations of occassional feeding in other areas, like west of Vancouver Island, and at the breeding grounds raise questions. Join us as we learn about what these stable istopes from skin samples can tell us about the importance of different feeding areas to these whales, why this turns the table on what we have previously thought about their feeding habits, and why this information is so crucial for conservation. 

Paper freely available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10780-1

Join Pacific Mammal Research (PacMam) scientists to learn about different marine mammals! We discuss a little about the biology, behavior and fun facts about each species. Have fun and learn about marine mammals with PacMam!      

This episode: Burmeister's porpoise

We did an episode about Mucormycosis a while back, and here we are touching on it again, but this time about the risk factors.  This is an emergent disease in marine mammals of the Salish Sea, and particularly harbor porpoises who it seems to affect more than other species. In addition, porpoises are a good surrogate for how this disease can affect Southern Resident Killer Whales that are critically endangered. But in order to understand what the risk is, we need to know how they get the fungus, how likely are they to be exposed to it, how severe is the infection, what does it look like, and what are the cofactors that may affect if a porpoise gets the disease? In this paper the authors look at a lot of different factors, studies and what we know from other species and combine them into a qualitative risk assessment for harbor porpoises that is the first step to better understanding this disease and its effect on Salish Sea marine mammals. 

Paper is open access and freely available: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00555/full

This episode is a little different, we aren't going over one journal paper, but a few. These papers are called notes, and they are shorter descriptions of interesting behaviors, observations or occurrences. They are similar to anecdotes in that a full analysis of the event or behavior cannot be conducted as there are only a few instances (or maybe only 1), and so a full analysis cannot be completed, or it would not be correct to do so. Some have seen these types of papers as 'less than', or not worthy of publication, but that is changing. Science starts with observation - that is the beginning of the scientific method, it starts the process!  These observations are important as they can point us in new directions of research, or just to keep our eyes open for something we weren't looking for before.  This allows us to ask more questions and better understand the organisms we are studying - sometimes a new behavior becomes the norm!  Join us as we showcase a few scientific notes that show why this type of paper is so important, and the amazing things they have documented.

Join Pacific Mammal Research (PacMam) scientists to learn about different marine mammals! We discuss a little about the biology, behavior and fun facts about each species. Have fun and learn about marine mammals with PacMam!      

This episode: The Ribbon seal

New Zealand leopard seals are generalist top predators. However, little is known about the diet and foraging ecology for many populations, especially in New Zealand.  Although they are usually found around Antarctic waters, they can be found farther north along the land masses and islands that surround those waters. Recently a nonprofit organization, leopardseals.org, has found through photo-ID that individuals are returning to the NZ coastline. They also collect scat, or poop, to identify what they are eating. This unique research combines citizen science, dedicated research, photo-ID, along morphological and DNA analyses to identify prey of the NZ leopard seals. Come learn about how citizens are helping collect vital data, and what these leopard seals are eating - something that hasn't been documented in this species before!

Join Pacific Mammal Research (PacMam) scientists to learn about different marine mammals! We discuss a little about the biology, behavior and fun facts about each species. Have fun and learn about marine mammals with PacMam!

This episode: Peale's dolphin