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Anatomy professor Dr. Reidenberg's passionate exposition on sperm whale echolocation:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/...erm-whale.html
Three days earlier, Dr. Reidenberg . . . had been sitting in her laboratory at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. Her lab is full of whale flippers and frozen camel heads and the other things that a comparative anatomist keeps around the workplace. The phone rang.
A British television production company was on the line, wondering if she could fly to Ireland that night. They were about to start filming a series about the worlds biggest animals and, by sheer coincidence, a 65-ton fin whale had washed up on the south coast of Ireland. They wanted to film her dissecting it the next day.
. . .
Dr. Reidenberg had to begin the dissection in Ireland by dealing with the bacterial gas that was building to dangerous levels inside the whales carcass. It was inflating like the Hindenburg, she said. If you cut in too deep, you end up with a million sausage links all over the place.
Her solution was to knife a series of holes in the whales throat. Its like defusing a bomb, she said. A rush of wind came from each one, producing a symphony of flatulence. It took an hour for all the gas to exit.
Next, she used a meat hook to haul herself about 10 feet up to the top of the 65-foot-long animal, where she carved long incisions into its side. A digger from a local construction company was used to peel away the blubber in long strips. Now Dr. Reidenberg could cut open a doorway into the whales gut and haul out the intestines. The next morning, she climbed into the abdominal cavity, where each organ told its own story. She located the vestigial pelvis, a reminder of whale ancestors that lived on land. She extracted the voice box, which was bigger than she was.
After two days of this, she went back to her hotel and tried to clean off the whale grease. Fifteen showers and three baths later, she still had to make up excuses on the flight to New York; it took days for the grease to completely evaporate from her skin.
. . .
At Mount Sinai, Dr. Reidenberg brings her fieldwork into the classroom, showing medical students how our own anatomy is one of many variations evolution has produced. On Inside Natures Giants, she brings some of the same lessons to her audience.
www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/science/joy-reidenberg-anatomist-builds-a-following-on-inside-natures-giants.html
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/...erm-whale.html
Three days earlier, Dr. Reidenberg . . . had been sitting in her laboratory at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. Her lab is full of whale flippers and frozen camel heads and the other things that a comparative anatomist keeps around the workplace. The phone rang.
A British television production company was on the line, wondering if she could fly to Ireland that night. They were about to start filming a series about the worlds biggest animals and, by sheer coincidence, a 65-ton fin whale had washed up on the south coast of Ireland. They wanted to film her dissecting it the next day.
. . .
Dr. Reidenberg had to begin the dissection in Ireland by dealing with the bacterial gas that was building to dangerous levels inside the whales carcass. It was inflating like the Hindenburg, she said. If you cut in too deep, you end up with a million sausage links all over the place.
Her solution was to knife a series of holes in the whales throat. Its like defusing a bomb, she said. A rush of wind came from each one, producing a symphony of flatulence. It took an hour for all the gas to exit.
Next, she used a meat hook to haul herself about 10 feet up to the top of the 65-foot-long animal, where she carved long incisions into its side. A digger from a local construction company was used to peel away the blubber in long strips. Now Dr. Reidenberg could cut open a doorway into the whales gut and haul out the intestines. The next morning, she climbed into the abdominal cavity, where each organ told its own story. She located the vestigial pelvis, a reminder of whale ancestors that lived on land. She extracted the voice box, which was bigger than she was.
After two days of this, she went back to her hotel and tried to clean off the whale grease. Fifteen showers and three baths later, she still had to make up excuses on the flight to New York; it took days for the grease to completely evaporate from her skin.
. . .
At Mount Sinai, Dr. Reidenberg brings her fieldwork into the classroom, showing medical students how our own anatomy is one of many variations evolution has produced. On Inside Natures Giants, she brings some of the same lessons to her audience.
www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/science/joy-reidenberg-anatomist-builds-a-following-on-inside-natures-giants.html
