Yikes! 30 killer whales surrounded her kayak!

[yuiyoshida]

[Old Crow]

1. Omigosh.

You could tell the whales knew she was there and were even playing with her a bit by the way several of them made deliberate turns toward her kayak. Such intelligent animals! I expect they heard her exclamations and laughter. I wonder if that amused them. Hmmm. I think it probably did, actually.

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. Looks like she was pretty close to land, too.

Then there's the video of the whale breaching right into the kayak.

Is kayaking pretty risky? Doesn't look like something I would want to do.

[Old Crow]

3. Yeah, she was right by the shore.

It looked to me like it was a pod of whales making their usual rounds to catch fish and on this particular day, it was like:

Whale 1: "Hey, what's that thingy? And did you hear that? One of those hoo-mans is in it! I can tell by the squealing."

Whale 2: "Oh, yeah, I've seen those paddling around here before. Huh. Just go under it."

Whale 1: "Can I play with it? I like the hoo-man noises!"

Whale 3: "C'mon, you knuckleheads. We've got salmon to catch."

Whales 1 & 2: "Okay, okay. Sheesh. All work and no play...."

[Old Crow]

4. By the way, here's a freaky fact from paleontology.

In the past 15 years, paleontologists have managed to create a fossil lineage back from present-day whales to their land-dwelling mammalian ancestors. And get this: This whales descended from a wolf-like creature that lived on the banks of rivers and caught fish in the shallows. They've found fossils showing this wolf-life creature becoming more and more aquatic, spending more and more time in the water and less and less on land, its legs slowly becoming more flipper-like and its nostrils slowly moving back and up over the forehead over the span of millions of years.

Absolutely amazing research. Three cheers for evolution. As Richard Dawkins has famously quipped, it's The Greatest Show On Earth.

[leftyladyfrommo]

5. Wow

Usually it goes the other direction. They start out in the ocean and then come onto land.

Interesting.

[Old Crow]

6. Yes, and that's the incredible thing.

If you follow the full evolutionary arc, in the case of whales, it goes something like this:

1. Vertebrate fish modify fins into legs and come up out of the ocean onto the land.

2. Vertebrate wolf-like creature modifies legs into fins--and returns to the oceans.

It's kind of like the whales gave life on land a try and after about a billion years decided, "Naah... not for us. We're gonna go back into the water, thanks."