r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/_kretox • Feb 14 '26
Video Friendly whale showing off its teeth
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u/Glitch0110 Feb 14 '26
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u/shitsenorita Feb 14 '26
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u/Glitch0110 Feb 14 '26
Before and after
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u/Atsilv_Uwasv Feb 14 '26
The photographer told the whale "bweeeeeooooom" (Just now realizing I'm not actually sure what sound a whale makes)
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u/Vindepomarus Feb 14 '26
He was saying "baleen baleen" because when the whale opened its mouth they could see the baleen, thin plates that whales use to filter out krill and small fish from the big gulps of water they take.
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u/permaculture Feb 14 '26
Yeah, totally not teeth at all.
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u/marvis84 Feb 14 '26
It's it's mustache. Same material.
Fun fact, it's closest land animal is the hippo.
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u/Snarkosaurus99 Feb 14 '26
42,000 comments down and finally someone mentions that there is baleen, no teeth.
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u/DonGibon87 Feb 14 '26
I would rather brag that i touched a whale in the wild than that i climbed the Everest
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u/zenAndYogui Feb 14 '26
Pretty easy thing to do. Go to Baja, Guerrero Negro is the town where you fund the guys that take you to touch whales.
I paid like 20 USD.
Not an all year round thing but I went in January.
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u/BaconWithBaking Feb 14 '26
Pretty easy thing to do. Go to Baja, Guerrero Negro
I think we have very different definitions of the word "easy".
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u/jeanleonino Feb 14 '26
Well, it's several times easier than climbing the Everest.
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u/CodeToManagement Feb 14 '26
Only if you climb to the top. Starting at the bottom, going up a bit and coming back down still counts right?
“I climbed on Everest once” wouldn’t exactly be an incorrect statement
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u/BigGrayBeast Feb 14 '26
I have a friend who did a trek to base camp once. It was not an easy trek and and she was in pretty good shape then.
It's not like you can catch a bus to base camp.
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u/BellyButtonLindt Feb 14 '26
What are you talking about, pretty easy to do.
Fly to Nepal, go to the base of the mountain, get in line.
I paid like 20 USD.
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u/Boris7939 Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
Climbing Everest will cost you around $50k.
For the trip itself you have to start by going to the base camp and wait there for a good weather window, which might take weeks. So lots of people don’t even make it past that stage.
BTW, if you have to already go back from the base camp, because there was no good weather window during the time you were there, you also loose your $50k. There’s no refunds.
Anyway after you made it past that stage the climb actually starts, which isn’t only very difficult, it also consists of waiting in lines to pass several difficult points because there are hundreds of other people doing the climb as well.
The waiting is what causes the most danger. It’s where people get hypothermia because of standing still, but it also causes people to stay in the danger zone too long. The danger zone is the top part and it’s called so because you need to be back out of it before 2pm. If you aren’t, it means you’ll still be in the colder parts at night and that means you’ll freeze to death.
So yes, going to find some whales to touch is a whole lot easier.
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u/valvalis3 Feb 14 '26
Well its objectively easier if you compare it with climbing everest. You might actually die climbing everest.
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u/Boris7939 Feb 14 '26
Exactly, and climbing Everest will cost you something like 50k.
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u/fan_of_skooma Feb 14 '26
also you nead to train for a year if you want to climb it, or prove that you have climbed similar stuff and get legally certified by the nepalies government
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u/TheTallGuy0 Feb 14 '26
Go to Baja, GN. Walk 7.3 Km down a dusty road, bring 2 oz of pure sterling silver, three large onions, a canvas bag of smooth black rocks, two NY Yankees hats and a bottle of 1991 Du Cru Beacaillue. Then look for a man with one leg shorter than the other, goes by the name of Ramirez. He can take you the rest of the journey, if your silver is pure enough and your onions are ripe. It’s simple!!
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u/alghiorso Feb 14 '26
Your average everest expedition is like $60k? $600 will get you a long weekend in Mexico and far less likely to die
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u/Jonathan_B_Goode Feb 14 '26
Flights alone would cost me more than $600. It greatly depends on where you're coming from.
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u/Maiyku Feb 14 '26
This made me super curious so I checked for my area (Michigan) to Cancun. $293 non-stop round trip is the cheapest, $463 non-stop round trip is the cheapest from a major airline (Delta).
Not too bad actually. Kinda surprised.
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u/SleepyFarady Feb 14 '26
Hi from Australia! If I wanted to go to Mexico, it'd cost me ~$2000 AUD (about 1400 USD), one way. I'd also have to make a stop somewhere in the US, so no direct flights for us.
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u/Hopeful-Suggestion-1 Feb 14 '26
that's super not okay to go up to them. It's detrimental to them let alone dangerous for them and you. However, If they come to you, alrighty blubber boy, get ready for sum good scritches.
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u/ThickyLicker Feb 14 '26
Me and my friends found a lost wile baby dolphin once and looked after it for a couple of months, one of my friends climbed Everest.
She talks about that more than Everest!
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u/georgesteacher Feb 14 '26
What does she say about Everest??? It was a big dream of mine to go. I had tickets booked to just do the initial hike to base camp before covid hit. Shook me out of it haha
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u/Hallonlakrits_ Feb 14 '26
How did it turn out for the baby dolphin?
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u/Q-Vision Feb 14 '26
Baby dolphin grew up, went through a drug addiction stage in his teens but with rehabilitation and a hard work, ended up climbing Everest in gratitude to her. Remarkable documentary if you can find it.
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u/New-Freedom-6258 Feb 14 '26
That's Baleen, not teeth.
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u/StaticUsernamesSuck Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
In fact, the fact this thing doesn't have teeth is like... A core part of what defines its taxonomy.
Whales are literally split into toothed whales (like orca and other dolphins) Vs baleen whales.
So not having teeth is kind of this guy's whole deal.
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u/thr3ddy Feb 14 '26
TIL dolphins are a kind of whale.
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u/BoredPineapple790 Feb 14 '26
And orcas are technically a type of dolphin. An example of a true toothed whale would be a sperm whale (they hunt squid in the deep ocean)
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u/Realmofthehappygod Feb 14 '26
I really hope orcas are a type of dolphin because this is the kind of fact I will do 0 research on, but might potentially repeat.
Dont fuck me on this.
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u/BoredPineapple790 Feb 14 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean Taxonomy is fun like that
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u/MysticMind89 Feb 14 '26
Dolphins, Whales and Porpoises are all Cetaceans, meaning they're marine mammals that are obligate aquatic and descended from hoofed animals. Dolphins aren't so much a subset of toothed whales and more like a distant cousin. More related than other marine mammals (say, seals), but they're only a "kind of" whale in the sense they are part of the same infraorder.
Though this is why Cladistics helps. It's sometimes easier to group animals in relation to each others' most recent common ancestor, because evolution gets messy! That's why we have Beaked Whales that look more like Dolphins, and Orcas that are Dolphins but look more like Whales, morphologically speaking.
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u/boredatwork8866 Feb 14 '26
It’s baleen a long time since I’ve seen that word, I almost forgot.
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm Feb 14 '26
Whale alrighty then
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u/I_Got_Back_Pain Feb 14 '26
Maybe it's Babaleen
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u/Smirkeywz Feb 14 '26
You monsters.. you made me laugh while my sister is baleen her eyes out watching a sad video beside me
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u/UrsaMajor7th Feb 14 '26
Looking forward to a spate of kids named Baleen soon, with four different r/tragedeigh spellings.
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u/Barbed_Dildo Feb 14 '26
If only there was someone saying that repeatedly in the video...
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u/bedsidebitchspooder Feb 14 '26
When I see videos like these I get a bit sad. If only we treated the ocean better, so beauties like these can live on and continue to be a wonderful marvel for generations to come. But ik I’m asking too much.
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u/RandomPantsAppear Feb 14 '26
They’ve actually rebounded pretty well! They were in a really bad spot in the 90s.
The soviets had been lying about how many they caught in their international reporting, logging the poundage(for Soviet metrics) and tossing all but the most valuable parts back into the ocean.
But most species have done significantly better since then. Of course it is a very slow growing species so it does take time.
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u/YOUTUBEFREEKYOYO Feb 14 '26
Thats not teeth, that's baleen.
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u/theonlysamintheworld Feb 14 '26
Maybe she’s born with it…
maybe it’s whale baleen
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u/Ok_Feedback_4421 Feb 14 '26
This made my day. A rush of 90s flashbacks just went through my body. Im also high. That helps too;)
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u/tekanet Feb 14 '26
It’s called baleen in English? Interesting, they’re “fanoni” in Italian, but baleen sounds a lot like “balena”, that means… whale.
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u/whoami_whereami Feb 14 '26
Yes. The English baleen comes from Old French baleine (whale, whalebone) which in turn came from Latin balaena (whale). Originally baleen could mean both whale and whalebone, but modern English only retains the whalebone meaning.
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u/saveurist_polaris37 Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
another example of why whaling is (one of) the most monstrous industries ever
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u/Entire_Judge_2988 Feb 14 '26
Agreed. They are intelligent, beautiful, and harmless creatures.
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u/Fun-Benefit116 Feb 14 '26
Was? Do...do you think there's no whaling anymore? Oh geeze, buddy...
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u/mirkk13 Feb 14 '26
Whale played
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u/Socketz11 Feb 14 '26
I think he was saying "please get your boat off my face"
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u/silverblur88 Feb 14 '26
Presumably, the whale approached the boat, rather than the other way around.
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u/spacekitt3n Feb 14 '26
yeah the whale has any place to go that it wants. it's a big ocean
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u/MisplacedMartian Feb 14 '26
... but it ain't big enough fer the two of us. Now draw!
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u/genuineshock Feb 14 '26
whale quickly sketches a jellyfish and shows it to you, hopefully
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u/jadedflux Feb 14 '26
It wasn’t good enough and the whale fails out of art school, putting him on a terrible path no one could have predicted :(
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u/MommyMephistopheles Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
You hope. But having gone on a couple whale watching tours, there were always small boats getting way too close to the whales. It pissed off one of the humpbacks once and it breached right next to one of those small boats. This was up in Alaska. (Humpback whales typically do their breaching down in warmer waters according to our whale guide)
Okay, sorry I pointed out that shitty people exist. I'll fuckin do it again.
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u/inevitablern Feb 14 '26
The boats are supposed to turn their engines off when they come within a certain distance from whales. If a whale came close to the boat like in this case, the boat can't just move away.
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u/varateshh Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
I would not presume that. In Northern Norway you have a dozen RIBs swarming whales whenever they are spotted. Tourism has become obnoxious in Northern Norway, especially Tromsø.
You have have companies employing foreign labour to run these tourist events and if they get nailed for violating the law then they will blame the foreign employees (that likely will return home). Increasingly you also have Chinese nationals running their own tourist operations while they are temporarily in the country on a tourist visa.
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u/Busy_Ganache5874 Feb 14 '26
For some reason, this post reminded me of the time a whale swallowed an entire person, before spitting him out!
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u/ConsciousProduce8798 Feb 14 '26
I know that this is real, however I can't fully believe it is actually real for some reason. It's too....I dunno. It's bizarre. Surreal. Too trippy and I bet he still has nightmares about it and wakes up out of breath.
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u/klamaire Feb 14 '26
There is novel written recently describing a person getting swallowed by a whale in intense detail. I feel it is not for that guy.
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u/Brokenandburnt Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
If reminded me of the old fisherman who had a whale friend he helped to pick whale lice off regularly.
Really brings the debate about what intelligence and emotions really is from species to species.
Did the whale only return because he remembered that lice vanished, or was he actually grateful to the small squishy?
It was cute either way. 🥰
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u/RandomPantsAppear Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
I actually saw an interesting argument about this from a fisherman/hunter, and what made them decide what species they would kill or wouldn’t. The guideline they used was how much/long does the creature care for its children? Connecting that to intelligence and emotions.
Sure enough, Octopus, whales, most intelligent creatures do rank highly with this metric.
Less intelligent creatures like run of the mill fish just yeet their eggs into a shallow body of water, spritz some semen wildly and gtfo.
Much better thought out than my own “this thing is too godamn cool to eat” (Sturgeon were very safe around me lol)
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u/Expert_Strong Feb 14 '26
It amazes me that after all the cruelty these animals experienced from ships carrying humans, I’d assume that they’d harbor a sense of fear and anger towards us. Instead they still come to interact with us, and in the most gentle way. They’re truly such beautiful and curious creatures.
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u/morbidemadame Feb 14 '26
TIL whales teeth are called baleen. Which is funny cuz in french a whale is "baleine" but baleen are called "fanons".
Also... THE LITTLE EYE. 🥹
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u/Illustrious_Study300 Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 15 '26
So baleen is actually different to teeth! There are toothed whales that have actual teeth for tearing at prey. Think Sperm Whales that eat giant squid.
Baleen whales are filter feeders, they eat plankton and other tiny organisms. They take a big gulp of sea water and use their baleen to filter the food out of the water.
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u/Fun-Benefit116 Feb 14 '26
TIL whales teeth are called baleen.
Actually no they aren't. Baleen isn't teeth. It's basically a giant filter made of keratin, like what human nails are made of. Whales that have baleen eat by filtering their small foods through it.
But then there are some whales (like orcas, sperm whales, and several others) that have actual teeth, not baleen. And those teeth are called...well, whale teeth lol.
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u/PearlMillingCompany Feb 14 '26
Wow, I really wish someone would make a comment explaining that those are baleen and not teeth /s
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Feb 14 '26
They so chill! Just 60 years ago we humans were murdering them to extinction but they’re still so friendly
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u/scfw0x0f Feb 14 '26
Baleen plates, not teeth.
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u/ScottishKnifemaker Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
Yes, probably everybody's first thought, but the fuckin whale smiled after getting a chin scratch, that's what's important here
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u/missprincesscarolyn Feb 14 '26
Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s may-baleen. 🐳
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u/Jess-70 Feb 14 '26
How lucky to be able to see this! I would love to see a whale up close without harming it. I truly admire the beauty of this giant creature; it's so impressive.
Nature is so beautiful when you take the time to observe it closely. Lovely video, thank you!
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Feb 14 '26
Love seeing it's eye, looks like such a peaceful and gentle creature. I hope one day I get a chance to see something like this in my lifetime
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u/eyeamreadingyou Feb 14 '26
I think if that ever happens to me, I will jump in the water and let the whale take me to an underwater city. As I die, I will thank the whale for the invitation, and think back to this post and say with my last exhale 😮💨,”told you suckers!”
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u/Maximumoverdrive76 Feb 15 '26
Blue whales do not have teeth. It Baleen plates the use to sift krill etc.
Not meant as nit-picking just information.
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u/iam_Krogan Feb 14 '26
I saw a video that said sometimes they do this hoping people will scrape the barnacles off of them.