11 December 2008 – 12.55pm
Almost there and I was rapt to get the finalised event programme for this weekend’s opening. Our events team have done an amazing job – balancing hard science with fun, informative events for all.
Dr Steve O’Shea is back in the house talking about the importance of our specimen to the science world with TV3′s fishing guru, Graeme Sinclair.
Te Papa’s own Chris Paulin will be showing how we got from an ice cube to an exhibit!
Also, squid dissections (arrow squid, mind you!), storytelling and craft activities for the young and old.
And the best thing is that all the events are FREE.
The whale has now been completed dissected and the organs such as intestine, kidneys and heart, are being preserved in a formalin solution. the bones are being flensed (stripped of muscle). The stomach content revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Dr Joy Reidenberg is now in the process of investigating respiratory tract. Above you can see the lungs and Dr Reidenberg is holding up the laryngeal sac which is different to other animals in that it sits off to the side instead in the middle.
This morning the internal organs were individually explored. The blood vessels near the heart showed that this whale successfully changed from an intra uterine to extra uterine life (technically, the ductus arteriosus was closed).
The ductus arteriosus is a blood vessel that circulates oxygenated blood received from the mother whale while the baby whale is in the uterus. When the baby whale is born, the lungs take over this function and the ductus arteriosus gradually closes and becomes a part of the ligature.
This morning the internal organs will be removed and preserved in jars for later study.
I am assured that this will reduce the smell – I have a pretty good stomach for this kind of thing but whale guts smell bad!
You can see part of the jaw being removed in the above picture and below is the view looking from the body up to the head.
The large white mass in the near the top of the skull is tympanic bulla (the ear bone).
You can see the heart in the lower right hand side corner with arteries coming out of it – they look like collapsed sausages.
Above is a picture of the Pygmy right whale lung, it’s about 45cm long when stretched out like it is below. The lungs sit under the backbone of the whale and isn’t divided into lobes like human lungs are.
The scientists told me that they think it’s smaller than usual in a whale of this size.
The heart is in perfect shape – it actually looked like a Valentine’s heart especially when it was lifted out – see below.
The scientists have removed the rib bones from one half of the whale. It’s getting a little bit smelly!
When the scientists lifted the intestine out, I could see it was attached by a thin but very tough membrane and in the membrane were…
Not chicken pox! Those darker lumps are lymph nodes!
Lymph channels are important as part of the immune system and filter the fluid to the heart that is not returned by veins. Lymph nodes in the gut, like above, carry the fat that has been absorbed by the gut and ensure that foriegn bodies like bacteria are eliminated before reaching the heart
Above you see the tongue of the baby pygmy right whale. Whales lips aren’t flexible enough to form a suction around the mother’s nipple like human babies do.
To latch on to the mother’s nipple, a baby whale curls its tongue. A good suction is assisted by the flaps on either side of the tongue – you can see one of them above. As the baby whale gets older and is no longer suckling, the flaps will mostly disappear. Cool, huh? 
Drs Reidenberg and Fordyce are now actively uncovering the deeper tissues of the throat. This specimen is in an excellent state of preservation, so that delicate tissues like nerves are easy to identify.
The scientists are removing the muscle layer to reveal the pygmy right whale’s unusual bone structure.
This is Dr Sentiel Rommel’s thoughts on the rib structure:
You can see the ribs gradually changing to the unique flattened and overlapping ribs on the right. the space between the ribs allows them to move as the whale breathes and also accomodates changes in volume that occurs as the air is compressed by water pressure when the whale dives through deep water.
The flattened ribs don’t have as much space between them and overlap. The study of terrestial animals that have wide, flattened ribs (the pangolin and anteater) have shown that these ribs proably increase the stiffness of the body.
So possibly a stiffer body has advantages in the way they swim, but this is purely speculative at the moment!
Hi this is Anton on Jane’s blog. This morning we discovered that the second rib on the left side of the animal is broken. We can tell from the bloody area around the break that the animal suffered this injury prior to death. Dead animals don’t bleed. This injury probably occured at the time of the stranding but most likely did not contribute to cause of death.
From Bruce Reidenburg:
The scientists are now exploring the layers of muscle on the sides of the whale. There is an interesting highly developed muscle that is special to the youngest baby whales. Since fetal whales are curled sideways in utero, this special adapted muscle unfolds the tail after the whale is born.
In people these muscles pull the back straight when standing. In the baby whale, this muscle is very powerful and becomes less developed as the animal ages. In humans, this is only one of a series of muscles that straighten the backwhen standing, so it is weak in baby humans and gets stronger as we learn to walk and run.
There is another interesting adaptation that is becoming visible during today’s dissection. The muscles of the abdominal wall involved in flexing ventrally are attaching to the broad non-respiratory ribs. In humans these muscles attach to the anterior part of the pelvis. In whales, these muscles are positioned to help propel the body wave during swimming. As we go deeper, we will find out what structures are tied to the whale’s small residual pelvis.
