Rebuilding a whale

The big centerpiece of the new permanent water gallery will be a fully articulated blue whale skeleton. However, exhibiting a specimen like this has many challenges, beside the obvious one presented by its enormous size. The specimen being prepared is not complete, but we don’t actually know how many pieces are missing. There is a large variability in the number of bones in the spine and in the flippers. Not every whale has the same number. So the technicians and researchers had to work together to figure out how this whale’s skeleton should be built. After a lot of research and consultation a model of the skeleton was made and scanned in 3D. This scan was placed in a 3D rendering of the gallery. Then the technicians and researchers played around with poses and placements on the computer until they felt they had it right. The technicians are now busy building the few missing pieces so that a complete skeleton can be mounted and displayed.

A. McDonald

Clayton Kennedy explains how he is building these few missing pieces.

It is really quite simple. Contoured, shaped cardboard is glued up, carved and further shaped with a sharp knife when dried then covered with paper strips dipped in PVA glue diluted with water. The dried model is then sanded and painted. This is a very quick and inexpensive method that avoids the costly and hazardous use of resins.

A.McDonald

Most museum skeletons, both bone and fossil, have some elements that have been sculpted to fill in the missing pieces. So next time you visit a museum, take a closer look and see if you can tell the difference.

Whale barnacle

Coronula diadema

Whale barnacle

CMNPA 1999-0022

These egg to fist sized crustaceans are found on humpback whales (and reported from fin, blue, and sperm whales) especially on the lips, the long grooves of the throat and the genital region.

C.Iburg

Barnacles begin their lives as free-swimming larvae, but appear able to ‘smell’ a nearby whale when ready to settle down. They then develop the heavy calcium-rich plates that shield the barnacle’s soft body (now lost in this specimen). As the plates fuse together, the whale’s skin is drawn into the spaces between the plates, permanently stitching the barnacle’s shell to the whale. Even though the barnacle may only live for one to two years, the whale carries the shell around until it can find a way to scrape it off.

C.Iburg

Luckily, the barnacles only attach to the surface layer of the whale’s very thick skin and blubber layer. They don’t harm the whale, just hitchhike through the plankton-rich water that the whales enjoy.

Another specimen

Diplogonoporus balaenopterae (Lönnberg, 1891) from Balaenoptera acutirostrata (Minke whale)
CMNPA 1999-0008

c. Iburg

This is a tapeworm that is often found in the small intestine of minke and sei whales but can also infect dogs and people who eat uncooked infected whale meat or fish (which might carry the larval stages of many parasites.) Like many parasites, tapeworms use different members of a food chain to foster and pass along the various life stages of the worm. The eggs of Diplogonoporus, shed in the feces of the whale, are eaten and hatch within small crustaceans called copepods, which are then eaten by small fish, later sieved out of the water by baleen whales such as the minke.

C. Iburg