Whale Guts Galore and Did You Know Whales Suffer from Arthritis?

Whale expert Bruce Rothschild, a professor of medicine at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine who is also a Carnegie Museum research associate, recently told me that many whales suffer from a form of arthritis known as spondyloarthropathy. People can get this condition too. It's a rheumatic disease characterized by inflammation of the spine and other joints. A predisposition for it can be inherited but, as for human arthritis, injuries and overall lifestyle can contribute to the condition.

For some reason, it had never occurred to me that whales could suffer from anything like arthritis. Rothschild believes the disease reduces back motion and could affect swimming speed in its numerous whale sufferers. Life in the open seas is rough, to say the least. Even with an aching back, whales must endure everything from broken ribs to multiple shark gashings, as their bodies suggest.

One such body was that of a poor young male pygmy right whale, which we told you about recently. He somehow became stranded in northern New Zealand. A dissection of the 6-month-old is wrapping up at The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa.

They're not pretty, but these photographs provide a rare and very up close view of pygmy right whale guts. (Credit goes to Te Papa.)

its lungs and laryngeal sac

heart (which the researchers said looks remarkably more like a Valentine's Day heart than that of most any other animal)

bunch o'guts

the pink dots in the below are the whale's lymph nodes

finally, its tongue

While studying the whale, the scientists noted that its mouth could not tighten together in a proper pucker, so whales can't technically kiss like we do, nor can they suckle as humans and certain other animals can. Instead, they grip their mother's nipple with side flaps on their flexible tongue, seen in the above, which gradually become smaller as the whale matures. This little guy was just an infant when he died, so the still food-covered flaps are visible.

Any death like this feels like a waste, but at least the individual will probably contribute more to our understanding of pygmy right whales, and baleen whales in general, than any other whale before him ever did.