First off, Happy New Year. Second, It’s Trivia Time. Did you know whales were originally land creatures? Well, evolution managed to take them from being 4 legged land types to sea creatures, which sort of explains why they go up for air to this day. But how did they take on these forms? Well, that’ll all be answered in the upcoming episode of The Nature of Things, The Mystery of the Walking Whale, which premieres January 11.
Once an animal the size of a dog or small deer, the whale took to water and grew accustomed to the aqua zone, eventually losing the hind limbs and turned into the modern whale we know. Blue whales are water-based because just look at that body, the ground would be too much given gravity. But believe it or not, there are some gigantic remains of the sea-creature, more so than the land creature it evolved from. Deep in a desert, where shoes are forbidden in case of stepping on fossils, you can find all kinds of remains. And I found all kinds of facts BTS as I spoke to Sarika Cullis-Suzuki who did some earlier research on the effects boat noises have on marine life, and is now focused more towards whales and other scientific facts that are interesting to learn about. Now let’s learn more about what Sarika did in this episode.
HNMAG: So what inspired you to figure out this rather interesting mystery?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: This was a show that was brought to us by a producer and I was so excited because I’m a marine biologist but I don’t know much about whales so this was an incredible opportunity to learn more about whales and their unbelievable evolutionary history. I was absolutely on board.
HNMAG: And was there any cool facts you wanted to include but couldn’t due to do time restraints?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: There was so many questions I had and of course, you can only cover so much in 44 minutes of a show. One of the things that really intrigued me were the scientists themselves that were doing the work. When I went to Egypt, I was able to talk to three of the researchers. One of them in particular blew me away, she was a woman and the things she had to go through and sacrifice in order to be a female palaeontologist in a very male dominated work environment was something else, and I just wish we could’ve done another doc all about her.
HNMAG: What do you like about whales and why did you choose to study them?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: As a marine biologist, my background is about fish. Looking at whales was very new to me, I think most of us are attracted to whales because they are very charismatic, and enormous. Blue whales are the biggest animals not only currently, but who have ever lived so there’s a lot of intrigue there. For me personally, it was a wonderful way to get to know these creatures that I didn’t know much about.
HNMAG: So what are your favourite sea creatures?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: Fish! Any type of fish, but my favourite right now is the one that I studied for my PHD which is a singing fish that you can find all the way along the coast of Canada but Alaska all the way down into California. The Alpha males will sing to the females to get them to come and breed with them. They sing so loudly that if you go down to the water’s edge in the summer, their song will resonate out of the ocean and into the air, so you can hear it with your human ear.
Sarika said it sounds like a room full of people sitting together and chanting. A low C-note that goes on for hours and sounds very meditative. I was fascinated by such a fact, but wanted to know more about her expedition in learning about whales.
HNMAG: Upon arriving at the fossils of the whale remains, how did you feel when you learned about them?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: It was pretty remarkable to be standing in a dessert, and looking at the remains of creatures that were alive 50 million years ago. It was incredible and the ones we were looking at were 40 million years old, but still, those time frames are staggering. Where we were in Egypt is now a dessert of course, but 40 million years ago, it was a very rich sea, with a lot of different animals and whale species. As the climate changed, and everything cooled, the waters disappeared and everything became a dessert so we are able to stand on the bottom of what was once a sea. In that way, you’re able to walk up to these bones.
HNMAG: Were there any other kinds of fossilized animal remains you found out there?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: I found shark’s teeth from millions of years ago, other fishbones, so it was extraordinary to see that firsthand. To my untrained eye, I would pick something up and not quite know. It was really cool because you weren’t searching for hours and then finding something, it was almost every step you were taking, that you were picking something up. I could see why people fall in love with palaeontology, it’s so exciting.
HNMAG: Amazing that you went straight to Egypt to find whale remains there. How was it decided to go to that particular spot?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: They had it set up, but the researchers had been looking at the remains of whales there for a long time and it’s called Whale Valley for a reason, so it’s known to be one of the hotspots for whale bones.
HNMAG: The discoveries shown in this episode are extremely amazing. Do you think a lot of people will be surprised by these revelations?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s why it’s such an intriguing title, Mystery of the Walking Whale. When you think of whales, you don’t think of them as having legs. You will discover the great ancestors of whales come from a terrestrial animal so it really opens up this whole way of thinking about life. When it comes to the modern whale, this evolutionary method happened over a short amount of time from over 10 million years.
Eventually blue whales grew to be the biggest of all time, given how much food they consumed per day which explains their size and the fact that they never got back onto land afterwards, among other things. Sarika says this is an example of how a body will change to meet its environment. Being underwater has allowed it to be so big.
HNMAG: Given how whales evolved from certain creatures, do you wonder if other sea creatures may have followed suit?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: Yes, other animals like Pinnipeds which would be like sea otters, and sea lions, they probably evolved from a land creature as well. Same story but different mechanism. The ancestor was land-based and eventually turned into an aquatic creature overtime.
HNMAG: What other mysteries about whales do you plan to solve in the future?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: (laughs) The neat thing about science is when you start asking questions, sometimes you get an answer but most of the time, it leads you to more questions. Even for these great discoveries that the scientists made there just now are the tip of the iceberg. They’re just opening that up, the fact that these fossils come from land-based creatures. What does that mean? They’re just diving into more questions.
HNMAG: Do you feel people will have ask questions about whales themselves and want to know answers to those questions in future episodes?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: I hope that is the takeaway, there are so many things to learn that just because we see something we think of it as a certain way. Actually, there’s a lot more that goes into it, evolution is an extraordinary thing, but I hope that people come away with a thousand more questions. That’s what science is about, asking questions, observing and being curious.
HNMAG: And how long did all the work take in general for this episode?
Sarika Cullis-Suzuki: The science behind it took years, and then it took about a year for the idea behind the show. They have to get researchers on it, talk to the scientists, go out in the field, and the filming part is not the biggest component. I was in Egypt for 10 days, and then I went to the Dominican Republic and Ottawa to look at the different creatures there. Most of the film process is behind the scenes, the research and writing it up, figuring it out, then a lot of the film is not used because you have to cut it down. Hopefully, there will be some online anecdotes that didn’t make it into the film and will be on the CBC website.
With Sarika taking charge as the host of the show, she felt lucky getting the chance to talk to these researchers, and she has moved more into communication and media full-time because of that. Thanks to the breath of so much research, it’s her focus, and is helping her get far especially having messages get out more immediately in helping people become more aware of the environment.
So keep an eye out for this episode of The Nature of Things when it premieres on CBC next week. Check CBC Gem as well if you can, there might be more cool facts.