Post #3732164
2026-07-10 20:05 UTC
I wonder if it really isn't clear why whales should have ear wax.
I think the reason why humans have ear wax is: it prevents small insects from building nests in our ears. Any insect that tries will get stuck in the wax, die, and are eventually be ejected.
Why wouldn't the same advantage accrue to whales? What else is there to prevent a whale's ear canals from being colonized by barnacles? But the ear wax solution seems like it would work.
Replies (1)
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@pozorvlak@mathstodon.xyz 2026-07-10 21:16
@mjd@mathstodon.xyz foreign objects in general rather than insects specifically, I think - but there's more crud in the ocean than in the atmosphere, so that makes it *more* obvious that whales should have earwax! (Last night I watched a YouTube short of Australian park rangers (?) removing ticks from the ears of a blue-tongued lizard. Like all such videos, it was horribly arresting and arrestingly horrible)