Scientists have looked into the eyes of rare bowhead whales and learned that some of them can outlive humans by generations — with at least one male pushing 200 years old.
“About 5 percent of the population is over a hundred years old and in some cases 160 to 180 years old,” said Jeffrey Bada, a marine chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
But scientists had another, simpler way of guessing how old some whales could get:
George examined several whales killed during an annual Inupiat hunt and found stone harpoons imbedded in their flesh.
According to the Scripps Institution’s Bada, “Stone harpoons rapidly disappeared when Europeans went into the Arctic. … That was around 1860, 1870.”
Please enjoy the photo of a polar bear feasting on a bowhead whale carcass left by Inupiat hunters.