{"id":28130,"date":"2025-05-20T23:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T23:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28130"},"modified":"2025-05-20T23:27:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T23:27:48","slug":"humpback-whales-may-not-see-their-most-dangerous-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28130","title":{"rendered":"Humpback Whales May Not See Their Most Dangerous Threats"},"content":{"rendered":"
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These gentle giants have poor eyesight and may not be able to see fishnets and boats with which they have fatal encounters.<\/p>\n

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Run-ins with humans are the leading cause of death for humpback whales \u2014 and new research may explain why these gentle giants are so vulnerable to collisions with boats and entanglement in fishing nets.<\/p>\n

The softball-size eyes of humpbacks offer shockingly poor vision, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t the kind of vision issue that can be corrected with a prescription (as much as we\u2019d all like to see a whale in glasses).<\/p>\n

Simulations indicate whales see most of their surroundings in shadowy silhouettes and struggle to resolve fine-scale details until they\u2019re extremely close, said Jacob Bolin, who conducted the study while completing his marine biology degree at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. That means the spidery lines of fishing nets may be virtually invisible to humpbacks until it\u2019s too late to avoid them.<\/p>\n

Better understanding how humpbacks and other whales see could inspire \u201cstrategies for making fishing gear more visible\u201d and help the whales avoid deadly encounters with humans, said Lorian Schweikert, a sensory biologist also at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and an author of the paper.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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To understand humpback vision, Mr. Bolin and his team dissected the eye of a juvenile humpback whale that died on a North Carolina beach in 2011. While most whales that wash ashore have been dead for weeks and are badly decomposed, this individual was euthanized on land. That afforded scientists an opportunity to study humpback anatomy.<\/p>\n

Having such large eyes should, based on optical principles, be an asset: the longer the focal distance, or the length between the lens and the retina, the sharper the image, Mr. Bolin explained. But the researchers found that more than a third of the eye\u2019s depth was taken up by meaty sclera, the white of the eye that\u2019s not involved in vision.<\/p>\n

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These gentle giants have poor eyesight and may not be able to see fishnets and boats with which they have fatal encounters.Run-ins with humans are the leading cause of death for humpback whales \u2014 and new research may explain why these gentle giants are so vulnerable to collisions with boats and entanglement in fishing nets.The softball-size eyes of humpbacks offer shockingly poor vision, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t the kind of vision issue that can be corrected with a prescription (as much as we\u2019d all like to see a whale in glasses).Simulations indicate whales see most of their surroundings in shadowy silhouettes and struggle to resolve fine-scale details until they\u2019re extremely close, said Jacob Bolin, who conducted the study while completing his marine biology degree at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. That means the spidery lines of fishing nets may be virtually invisible to humpbacks until it\u2019s too late to avoid them.Better understanding how humpbacks and other whales see could inspire \u201cstrategies for making fishing gear more visible\u201d and help the whales avoid deadly encounters with humans, said Lorian Schweikert, a sensory biologist also at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and an author of the paper.To understand humpback vision, Mr. Bolin and his team dissected the eye of a juvenile humpback whale that died on a North Carolina beach in 2011. While most whales that wash ashore have been dead for weeks and are badly decomposed, this individual was euthanized on land. That afforded scientists an opportunity to study humpback anatomy.Having such large eyes should, based on optical principles, be an asset: the longer the focal distance, or the length between the lens and the retina, the sharper the image, Mr. Bolin explained. But the researchers found that more than a third of the eye\u2019s depth was taken up by meaty sclera, the white of the eye that\u2019s not involved in vision.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28132,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28133,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28130\/revisions\/28133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}