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#pee

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Let's talk about whales! 🐳

I usually speak mainly about the potential role of human urine and feces as fertilizer for agriculture because humans are the only species to actively mishandle excreta.

But obviously, the excreta of various animals also play important roles in natural cycles ♻️

Many people might know that seabirds compensate some of the nutrient loss to the sea since they hunt fish at sea but excrete on land
But of course, the bigger the animal, the larger the amount of nutrients they can transport.
A recent study looks at whales and the role they play moving nutrients around, as they feed in a region, then migrate and pee in another!
nature.com/articles/s41467-025

In fact they contribute more to nutrient transport than birds and natural phenomena and could be a dominant factor in some marine biogeochemical cycles, thus regulating local carbon cycle and biodiversity. In the past, before we hunted them down, whale pee might have shaped entire ecosystems...

NatureMigrating baleen whales transport high-latitude nutrients to tropical and subtropical ecosystems - Nature CommunicationsBaleen whales migrate from high latitude feeding grounds to subtropical reproductive winter grounds, translocating limiting nutrients across ecosystems. This study estimates the latitudinal movement of nutrients from carcasses, placentas and urea for four species of baleen whales that exhibit annual migrations.
#nitrogen#pee#whale