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<\/a><\/p>\nI am enjoying lots of hikes under the huge trees of the coastal rain forest, but I have seen many marine mammals in the wild and in captivity, including humpback whales, killer whales, beluga whales, Pacific white-sided dolphins, Dall\u2019s and harbor porpoises, Steller and California sea lions, harbor seals, and sea otters, not to mention loads of other cool wildlife, from eagles and other big birds to coyotes and giant slugs (which I have to watch out for as I run through the woods in the morning). It is beautiful here where the mountains meet the sea\u2014or at least it is if you can see through the misty fog which often shrouds the shoreline.<\/p>\n
My whale research currently focuses on the biomechanics and functional morphology of feeding in mysticete whales (like humpback and blue whales), and especially on the oral material, called baleen, which filters food from the water that flows into the mouth. Baleen is made of keratin, just like your hair and fingernails, and I am finding that although it is often described as a simple sieve, it is actually not at all a sieve but rather a highly dynamic filter whose porosity and other parameters varies according to flow conditions. In this respect I am working with engineers and physicists who study such things as cell filtration, hydrodynamics and hydraulics, and parachute deployment.<\/p>\n Last spring I was contacted by a Dutch engineer who asked me to join a collaborative project, inspired by a whale that washed up on the beach in the Netherlands, involving filtration in the humpback whale. The goal is to recreate the whale\u2019s oral filter using 3D scanning and 3D printing\u2014popular everywhere now, but especially in the Netherlands\u2014so that engineers can design better filters and so we can better understand how whales catch prey and separate it from engulfed water.<\/p>\n This project involves biomimicry, which means creating industrial applications inspired by nature. Think of Velcro closures based on spiny burrs and other \u201csticky\u201d plant seeds, or special racing swimsuits inspired by shark skin. Other examples include paint pigments based on iridescent scales of butterflies and super-sticky adhesives inspired by the glue on byssal threads that attach barnacles to rocks. Our biomimetic plan is to study whale filters, and in particular to create differently scaled 3D-printed models of varying pliancy, mimicking the way the whale\u2019s oral filter really works.<\/p>\n Thus I spent two weeks of September dashing around Holland on trains, giving four lectures and a workshop while meeting with physicists, engineers, and industrial designers. One of the talks I gave was at a 3D printing conference at a polymer science park, where I felt out of place as the only biologist and non-Dutch speaker. I spent time at a shipyard in Delft, a natural history museum in Leiden, a model-making factory in Hengelo, and university campuses in and around Zwolle, mostly working with people from the Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. I had a little free time to explore the Dutch countryside but mostly worked with researchers and students. This is a project that is expected to continue for the next two or three years. I\u2019ve picked up a bit of Dutch language, though the translation doesn\u2019t always work well either way (see: http:\/\/www.windesheim.nl\/over-windesheim\/persberichten\/2013\/september\/gastcollege-dr-alex-werth-over-evolutietheorie-en-darwin\/).<\/p>\n I am traveling with my family to New Zealand to speak at a marine mammal conference in December. While in New Zealand I will spend time meeting with research colleagues and\u2014ideally\u2014seeing whales, dolphins, seals and sea lions, penguins, and other wildlife and scenic beauty in the North and South Islands. Fortunately, December is summer in the Southern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n In addition to my whale research I have been working hard to finish several publications on evolutionary biology, focusing especially on the evolution of form in organisms\u2014or rather, why some forms seem not to evolve over long stretches of time. One such paper (with Professor Shear of the H-SC Biology Department) focuses on \u201cliving fossils\u201d like horseshoe crabs and coelacanths. How and why do they stay the same? I wrote a second paper on vestigial features of evolution and development: leftover remnants of biological change reflecting earlier states. A third paper centers on the potential scientific and philosophical limits of evolutionary explanations, and a fourth paper, co-written with a historian\/philosopher colleague from the University of Minnesota, looks at what we call the \u201cnaturalizing error.\u201d Philosophers often speak of the \u201cnaturalistic fallacy\u201d (that is, you can\u2019t equate what you see in nature with how you ought to behave), but we\u2019ve flipped the script and explain that people\u2019s tendency to describe nature through the lens of personal preconception leads to biased analyses. For example, museum displays of Neanderthals typically present a \u201cnuclear family\u201d of parents and two children, which tells more about how we currently see ourselves than what likely occurred in the past.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the short version of what I\u2019ve been up to\u2014I\u2019m leaving out all the gory details\u2014and I can continue to update folks on my sabbatical activities, especially my research studies and travels, with this blog. Meanwhile I hope everyone back at H-SC is enjoying a great year. We miss everyone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am away on sabbatical leave for the entire 2013-14 academic year, taking a break from teaching, advising, committee work and other college duties to focus on my research. At the end of August my family and I drove across … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n