61: Whale Fall Ecology & Jury Duty

What happens when the largest living animal becomes the largest dead animal?  Just how complex could a dead whale be?  And what are the differences, flaws, and nuances of the jury system, and can we be studying it better?

Images we Talk About:
The Zombie Worm

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:59) Whale Fall Ecology
(00:52:52) Jury Duty
(01:32:41) Outro

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We also learn about: A bucket of mice, when whales die the people who love them will miss them, a jury of your cohosts will decide if your topic is boring, Tom stretching his arms to measure a 34 meter long whale, marine snow and whale falls, gettin ghastly gassy, a new mussel told us to go check out the whale fall, whales are mortal, deep sea mussel delicacy, how hard could it be to find a whale over 70% of the earth’s surface? let’s just wait for the carcass to come to us… wait actually?? welcome to our automatic zoo of dead things on the beach brought to you by the crown, sinking beached whale carcasses, the 3 stages of whale fall, Denial/Mobile Scavenger Phase can take 2 years, scavengers eat about one (1) Caroline of whale per day, Enrichment Opportunist Phase, Sulfophilic Phase, 7% of a whale is bone lipid, a sulfur bacteria carpet. did we walk into Caroline’s trap? This final phase can last 100 years! It’s not a trap if I’m asking you a question! 690,000 whale falls at any time, never in my wildest dreams would i be so lucky as to know the 12km distance from fall to fall statistic, whaling is deforestation for bacteria, Osedax or the zombie worm or the bone devourer or snot flower, there’s Drama in this whale fall ecosystem, dinosaur fall ecosystems, fossilized bones with fossilized deep sea snails, we got picked to talk about jury duty, UK US differences, a 900 day trial, there’s something wrong with Ella, the US is the only country to have so many civil juries, this topic has become a US UK debate, only the US requires unanimity, juror selection bias, racially diverse juries do a better job, I wish we could be surprised peremptory challenge is biased against women, oops it’s a british colinization topic, you could literally say too many asians, semi-jural systems, is this a philosophy topic about human nature?? our various biases, the confirmation bias against tom’s bad jokes, can we study jury bias? there hasn’t been any research on live jury deliberation.

Sources:
NatGeo: Dead whales are washing up on the East Coast.
NHM: Whale Fall: What Happens When Whales Die?
Review of the Impact of Whale Fall on Biodiversity in Deep-Sea Ecosystems (2022)
The Discovery of a Natural Whale Fall in the Antarctic Deep Sea (2013)
NPR: What Happens After A Whale Dies?
Scientific American: Life at the Bottom: The Prolific Afterlife of Whales
Fish Food in the Deep