Like a tree's rings, blue whale's earwax tells a story of its life (LA Times)

[petronius]

Scientists probing a giant plug of earwax pulled from a dead blue whale have discovered in its hardened layers a detailed biography of the wild animal's life, from birth to death, in 6-month chapters.

Their new technique, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, arms researchers with a tool to understand a whale’s hormonal and chemical biography -- and a window into how pollutants, some long discontinued, still pervade the environment today.

Whales are often called marine sentinels because they can reveal a lot about the waters they pass through, said study coauthor Sascha Usenko, an analytical environmental chemist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

"These types of marine mammals that are long-lived have a great ability to accumulate contaminants, and so they’re often perceived as being sentinels of their ecosystem," Usenko said.

--- Snip ---

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-blue-whale-ear-wax-plug-pollutants-hormones-20130916,0,6647217.story

And from a bit later in the article:

"It doesn’t necessarily smell great.... When we were pulling it out, some of the crew actually just left."

Pretty cool: I've heard about otoliths used for fisheries and paleoclimate research, but earwax is a whole new ball of... well, you know...

[KT2000]

1. this is incredible!

very valuable info here.

[MADem]

2. VERY cool!!!! K/R!!!! nt

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Very odd. I can't see why the ear wax would accumulate that long.

I wonder if this was a pathological case, like some kind of blockage ? Not clear from the article.

[petronius]

4. The paper in PNAS says that it's not uncommon in large species of baleen whales,

and even that there are lighter and darker layers associated with periods of feeding and migration (there's an image in Fig. 1):

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/09/10/1311418110.full.pdf+html

It's really bizarre - gotta give a lot of credit to whoever first thought of checking it out...

[AnneD]

6. Remember....

Their life is underwater. They need something water tight, resists changes in pressure, but let them hear sound waves. Actually, wax would be good.

[Skraxx]

5. My Ear Wax Tells A Story Too

But it's not fit for virgin ears.

What will they do when whales discover q-tips? Game over man.

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

7. Hold it...you stick your ear wax into other peoples' non-virgin ears?

I hope you are at least using some kind of protection, like ear-plugs or q-tip condoms.

And what's wrong with a virgin-ear? They have to learn some how.

[Skraxx]

8. Don't Knock Till You Try It!