Weird Stuff About the Ocean

Whale Eye / Credit: Roxanna Bikadoroff

Weird Stuff About the Ocean will be a random post, on the rare occasion that I have a wifi signal and there is nothing to repair aboard Flying Fish.

Today’s post even has a connection to the Holidays. From Nell Greenfieldboyce at NPR comes the story of a giant blue whale eyeball being gifted to the Animal Eyeball Lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

The eye, floating in a jar of preservative for 30 years, was part of a private collection that needed a new home. The Animal Eyeball Lab had some 50,000 specimens in their collection but nothing like this.

A beleaguered Postal Service carrier this week delivered a soggy white box wrapped in duct tape to the University. When the staff opened the package at the lab and beheld the dripping gray mass one scientist said, “It’s the best Christmas ever!”

NPR’s report is embedded here: https://www.npr.org/player/embed/572299263/573046527