Quote:
Originally Posted by Ciderpress
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The whales with the weird hair teeth are disgusting and should be eliminated.
Normal tooth whales only.
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Kinda interesting how both baleen whales and sperm whales are crustacean specialists… wait, no they aren’t: squid are molluscs. Still, the prey are feisty red little fellas.
I also wonder how the greatly depleted sperm whale population impacted their prey population of giant squid - with so few predators compared to 400 years ago are there more giant squid than ever?
If we consider prewhaling population of sperm whales to be 2 million, and that typical trophic level biomass loss is 90%, with a typical mass of 20 tonnes, there must have been a minimum of 40 million tonnes of giant squid globally at peak predation, so with reduced predation pressure we must assume that number is far bigger now, but at around 200 kilograms per individual equates to around one fifth of a billion giant squid alive on planet earth, minimum.