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Feeding Leviathans One Gulp at a Time

By loom on December 10, 2007.

In tomorrow's New York Times, I have a story about some very fun research--the study of the world's biggest gulp. Some new research indicates that the biggest species of whales eat by gulping their own weight in water every thirty seconds. They do so in much the same way a parachute stops a race car.

Here's the article.

Here's the podcast (I come on at about 8:30)

Here's the original paper.

And here are the web sites of two of the authors, Nick Pyenson and Jeremy Goldbogen.

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Enjoyed the article, but (you knew there had to be one) isn't the title extremely misleading? The article indicates the whales slow down because they are opening their mouths. The headline states that they stop, and then open their mouths. Stopping would make it hard to fill their mouths. Figure you don't have much control over the title of your piece, but it should be fixed.