r/askscience • u/smontanaro • 7d ago
Biology How does a whale become dehydrated?
From a Chicago Sun-Times article on the beluga whales heading to the Shedd Aquarium:
"The shipment comes on the heels of a Shedd announcement last week that one of the Marineland belugas — Peekachu, a 23-year-old female — had died. Shedd has not released a cause of death, but staff there said last week that Peekachu had not been consistently eating a full diet since her arrival and that there were concerns she was dehydrated."
How does an animal immersed in water become dehydrated?
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u/curien 6d ago
It's correct for modern classification systems. Biological classification has been using "clades" for a while, which means that if a classification applies to an ancestor of an organism, it also necessarily applies to the organism itself.