Scientists discovered rorqual whales have "stretchy" nerves in their moth and tongue that can double in length and spring back, similar to a bungee cord.
The discovery of these incredible nerves could provide insight into how whales are able to create a bubble between their body wall and blubber during deep-sea dives for prey, the University of British Colombia reported.
"This discovery was totally unexpected and unlike other nerve structures we've seen in vertebrates, which are of a more fixed length," said Wayne Vogl of UBC's Cellular and Physiological Sciences department. "The rorquals' bulk feeding mechanism required major changes in anatomy of the tongue and mouth blubber to allow large deformation, and now we recognize that it also required major modifications in the nerves in these tissues so they could also withstand the deformation."
If a human's nerves were to be stretched in this way it would cause severe damage, but the whale nerve cells are held within in central core that prevents the nerve fibers from beings actually stretched; instead they are "unfolded."
"Our next step is to get a better understanding of how the nerve core is folded to allow its rapid unpacking and re-packing during the feeding process," says UBC zoologist Robert Shadwick.
In the future, the same phenomenon could be identified in other creatures, such as in the throats of frogs or stretchy tongues of chameleons.
"This discovery underscores how little we know about even the basic anatomy of the largest animals alive in the oceans today," said Nick Pyenson, a former UBC postdoctoral researcher currently at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "Our findings add to the growing list of evolutionary solutions that whales evolved in response to new challenges faced in marine environments over millions of years."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Current Biology.
