r/whales • u/METALLIFE0917 • 4d ago

Scientists make a surprising discovery when they open the world's rarest whale

https://thinkstewartville.com/2024/12/24/scientists-make-shocking-find-inside-worlds-rarest-whale-unexpected-discovery-surprises-experts/
233 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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111

u/Equality_Executor 4d ago

Mesoplodon traversii, aka "spade-toothed whale" - if you want to look it up/fyi.

They found vestigial teeth in its upper jaw and nine stomachs...

59

u/Rose__Moon 4d ago

Nine stomachs??? Wow

29

u/Equality_Executor 4d ago

I'm guessing it's because digesting the harder parts of a squid is not easy, but I'm not scientist or anything. Maybe someone else can tell us the real reason :)

7

u/cmj3 3d ago

I question if that reporting is accurate. It's known that cetaceans like beaked possess a multi chambered pyloric stomach that connects the main stomach to the duodenum.

3

u/Equality_Executor 3d ago

It seems like the typical thing to do is count pyloric stomachs as chambers as well, but then specify how many of each type there are.

2

u/cmj3 2d ago

Yeah, it's kinda weird, which is why I find the ''nine stomachs'' reporting to be too vague to be helpful as it seem more likely to be referring to chambers we already knew about.

1

u/hunybadgeranxietypet 2d ago

The discovery of nine stomachs in the Travers’ beaked whale has intrigued scientists, as the number of stomachs varies among different whale species.

1

u/cmj3 2d ago

That's kinda my point. A lot of ''multiple stomachs'' referred to in common speech and media articles like that aren't necessarily considered separate stomachs in technical terms. Sometimes they're considered chambers of a single organ or emarginations. For example, in ruminants, only the abomasum is treated as the homolog of a true stomach while the omasum, reticulum, and rumen are considered modifications of the esophagus.

1

u/hunybadgeranxietypet 2d ago

True, true, but I really don't expect a popular reading article to be as exhaustive as all that. I'm a paleontology guy and I have accepted that most reporters have no idea or concept of the cranial structure of a Tylosaurus. "This water dinosaur had REALLY BIG TEETH."

1

u/cmj3 2d ago

Yeah, I get that. So based on what I can determine, it doesn't seem to be a "new discovery " as the same number of chambers were found in a another beaked whale.

12

u/arcbeam 4d ago

Eights not enough. Ten would just be crazy.

5

u/nrcx 4d ago

This article really reads like ChatGPT.

1

u/iCameToLearnSomeCode 20h ago

What the hell does this even mean?

"The rarity of this species is comparable to the scarcity of certain natural phenomena, such as the coldest cities in the world"

They've seen 6 of them, why not compare it to the 6 tallest people, or the 6 largest gold nuggets, or the 6 ugliest people or literally anything else with variety?

I had to stop reading there, hopefully someone with a brain will write a readable article about it at some point.