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Old 05-11-2012, 10:47 AM   #11
glatt
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Arlington, VA
Posts: 27,717
So it was pretty obvious to me that it was a detail of a whale, but I thought it was a humpback whale, which was wrong.

I wondered about those white spots. I always assumed they were just barnacles. It's true there are some barnacles in there, but mostly the white stuff is "whale lice," or cyamids.

If you look just below the eye, you can see some of the individual lice clearly and see their legs. Creepy.

The cyamids live on tough patches of whale skin, like callouses, called callosities. The cyamids just live in the crevasses of the callosities and give them a white color. They are basically little miniature crabs that hook onto the skin and eat it. Poor whales.
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