JAX CURIOSITY SHOP:  OLD-TIME WHALES & SHARKS

(Source of picture: Florida State Archives)

A SEA SERPENT?  -- Nowadays, long barges glide along the First Coast on their way to Jacksonville.  If we lived 36 to 40 million years ago, we would've seen whales that looked like massively overweight snakes. 

Named a Basilosaurus, this whale has been called Florida's first visitor.  The leviathan swam in Florida waters at about the time that the land began to emerge.  A Basilosaurus could grow up to 70 feet in length, longer than three elephants.  Just its skull measured as long as a large sofa. 

With a big mouth that bristled with teeth, a Basilosaurus could swallow a small shark whole, lifting  the victim clean out of the water.  When it wasn't feeding on sharks, it gobbled such things as mollusks & cetaceans. 

According to some people, these ancient monsters are still alive & eating!  The supposedly extinct whales are the mysterious sea serpents that have long scared sailors & other sea-goers.  Nevertheless, there is virtually no evidence to support the existence of giant sea serpents today. 

While we're talking abut whales, here's an fascinating fact:  The longest mammal on record measured 110 feet long.  It was a female blue whale that was caught in the South Atlantic in 1901. 

WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT -- In the old movie "Orca: The Killer Whale," the fiendish villain surged to the surface and bit a leg off of the character played by actress Bo Derek, the "Perfect 10."  Trapped in a house on a wrecked dock, Derek tumbled down the slanting floor into a waiting mouth.  Actually, the Basilosaurus also made surprise appearances at the edge of land.  It would even run the risk of beaching itself in order to ambush victims.  An unwary land mammal might meet its end on a sandbar that lay under just a few feet of water. 

A WHALE'S HUMBLE ORIGINS -- The Basilosaurus was once the largest animal on earth.  Ironically, the awesome whale descended from small, furry mammals that resided in trees during dinosaur days.  Like all mammals, including other whales, the Basilosaurus had to breathe air.  In addition, the creature cruised through the water by flapping its tail up & down.  This is a mammalian movement, since fish shift their tails from side to side.  Why did the Basilosaurus still swim like this?  Click here...  The land-based ancestors of the Basilosaurus galloped when they ran, so their backbones flexed up & down.  This old mammalian characteristic still showed itself when the Basilosaurus swam. 

A SINGLE PURPOSE -- The Basilosaurus sported a couple of tiny back limbs.  The long, serpentine shape of the Basilosaurus made underwater mating difficult.  Evolution kept the back limbs so that these ancient whales could hold their bodies close together.  The male's limbs would grasp the female's.  The whales were descended from land-based ancestors, and their back limbs were vestiges of their forebears' appendages.

OLD-FASHIONED JAWS -- Prowling Florida's coasts were immense sharks called giant whites. This fish measured up to 50 feet & maybe longer.  It cut quite a figure with its seven-inch teeth.  A giant white probably could've made mincemeat out of the shark in "Jaws," since that brute was supposed to be only 25 feet long.  The giant whites were the immediate ancestors of the modern great whites.

HEADS UP! -- People today are 15 times more likely to die from a falling coconut than from a shark attack, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

A HEAVYWEIGHT BOUT -- A shark vs. whale brawl has finally been captured on film.  The first known film of a clash between a great white shark & a killer whale was made in 1997.  A cameraman shot it underwater in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Francisco. 

The video depicted something that had never been known to happen: a female orca struggling with a great white in her mouth.  The orca measured about 20 feet long, while the shark, about 10 feet.  Marine biologists had assumed that the ocean's two big predators usually avoided each other. 

In the video, the killer whale thrashed the shark on the water's surface, a practice that orcas typically employ with prey.  Finally making the kill, the orca didn't sample its prize, though.  This mother whale gave the shark's body to its ten-foot-long calf whale.  According to a witness, the calf seemed to relish the liver, something that most human kids wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. 

What is the usual killer whale diet?   Orcas devour a variety of ocean animals, especially salmon, herring, & squid.  Some killer whales also consume seals, sea lions, sea otters, walruses, dolphins, sea birds, sea turtles, & even other whales.