Japanese whale researchers recently discovered a new species of baleen whale, which they have named Balaenoptera omurai. It’s not unusual to discover new species of animals, but not ones this large – about 12 meters long. Big as a bus, in other words.
This is going to impact on whale hunting, as it should. What may have been a larger population of one whale could end up being small populations of several different kinds of whale. What delicious irony that the whales killed for Japanese research could eventually lead to the end of whales killed for Japanese commerce.
Rumor has it that George Bush heralded the news of this large discovery with relief. Sources close to the President reported him as saying, “See? It took scientists two hundred years to find this whale, and its as big as a bus. A bus! And if the Japanese hadn’t been allowed to kill all those whales, we’d never have known this species exists.”
“Now you know why we haven’t found any WMD. We need to kill more Iraqi.”
