Whales Seems to Evolve Baleen Hairs and Loose Up Teeth's

The word baleen derives from the Latin word balaena which mean whale. Baleen is basically a filter feeder system inside the mouths of baleen whales. The filter feeder system works by a whale opening its mouth underwater and taking the large amount of water after that the whale then pushes the water out and animals such as krill are filtered by the baleen hairs and remain inside as food for the whale. Baleen can be said similar to bristles and consists of keratin, the same substance found in human fingernails and hair. Baleen is a skin derivative adjoining the upper silkin inside the mouth.

While some whales, such as the bowhead whale, have longer baleen than others whereas rest whales, such as the gray whale, only use one side of their baleen. These baleen bristles are arranged in plates across the upper jaw of the whale. Depending on the species, a baleen plate can be 0.5 to 3.5 m 1.6 to 11.5 ft long, and weigh up to 90 kg (200 lb). Its hairy fringes are called baleen hair or whalebone-hair. They are also called baleen bristles, which in sei whales are highly calcified, with calcification functioning to increase their stiffness. Baleen is believed to have evolved around 30 million years ago, possibly from a hard, gummy upper jaw, like the one a Dalls porpoise has it closely resembles baleen at the microscopic level. The initial evolution and radiation of baleen plates is believed to have occurred during Early Oligocene when Antarctica broke off from Gondwana and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current was formed, increasing productivity of ocean environments. Surprisingly whales were the first mammals to evolve baleen, and no other mammal uses any anatomical structure even remotely similar to it to consume its food. But strangely, baleen, whose chemical composition is more like that of hair or fingernails than bone, does not preserve well. A team of resaerchers studying the evolution of baleen in whales mouth said, Given the scale and rate of changes in the ocean today, we don't exactly know what that will mean for all of the different species of filter feeding whales, We know that they have changed pin the past. Its just a matter of whether they can keep up with whatever the oceans are doing and we're changing the oceans pretty quickly right now. Still scientists are trying to find out the actual impact of this evolution on the nature and human life.

By: Anuja Arora