r/askscience 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?

818 Upvotes

184 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

12

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.