TIL: Whale Poop Freshens Our Air | Today I Learned

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] Did you know that every time you breathe you need to be grateful to whale poop? It's true! Whales dive to the depth to feed, and then they come back after the [Music] surface. As they come back up to breathe, they poop. When they poop, they bring out these limiting nutrients, and it becomes this fertilizer for these tiny, tiny, tiny microscopic plants called phytoplankton.

[Music] Phytoplankton use these nutrients to photosynthesize. When you photosynthesize, you're releasing oxygen. Now, 50 to 70% of the oxygen we breathe is produced in the oceans. Historically, we killed a lot of whales for oil, for meat, and as we did that, we changed the abundance and distribution of these whales and their fertilizer.

That's actually a problem because we need their byproducts. We need their poop to keep our oceans [Music] alive. That's why we call them ecosystem engineers, because their survival is so imperative to the functioning of that entire ecosystem and everything around them. So every time you breathe, you really have to thank those whales and their whale poop. [Music]

Ray Dalio On The Biggest Failure of His Career

Why some people DON'T encourage you to sell Real Estate

View All

The On, Off Switch of Consciousness | Breakthrough

To map what goes on inside the brain, Muhammad implants tiny electrodes in his patients’ skulls. He then sends pulses to these electrodes, gradually increasing the current, sometimes with dramatic results. Recently, he inserted an electrode next to a smal…

When Life Hurts, Stop Clinging to It | The Philosophy of Epictetus

Our very sense of wellbeing is at gunpoint when we cling to the fickle, unreliable outside world. Around two thousand years ago, Stoic philosopher Epictetus observed that people are burdened and dragged down because they tend to care about too many things…

Is There Gravity In Space?

Have you ever looked up into the night sky and wondered what it would be like to be an astronaut floating around in the space station? Why are the astronauts floating? There’s weightlessness in space. You can experience the kind of weightlessness. Why? …

Daylight Saving Time Explained

Every year some countries move their clocks forward in the spring only to move them back in the autumn. To the vast majority of the world who doesn’t participate in this odd clock fiddling, it seems a baffling thing to do. So what’s the reason behind it? …

Product Leverage Is Egalitarian

Labor and capital are much less egalitarian, not just in their inputs but in their outputs. Let’s say that I need something that humans have to provide; like if I want a massage or if I need someone to cook my food. The more of a human element there is in…

What's the World's Most Littered Plastic Item? Cigarette Butts | National Geographic

This routine is iconic, and let’s forget two health issues; that’s obvious. We’re gonna focus on this part right here. It seems that cigarette litter is the last acceptable form of littering. It’s also one of the most littered plastic items on this planet…

TIL: Whale Poop Freshens Our Air | Today I Learned

More Articles