Tagged! Our very own "Wide Body!"

 Not wanting to be "size-ist" in any way, shape or form,  but yesterday we tagged our very own "wide body", and to paraphrase Queen and Freddie Mercury " Fat bottomed girls you really do make our rockin' world go round"!

"Move over, wide body coming through!".

"Wide Body"! "Fat bottomed girl"! Whoah, enough of the sexist and size-ist language.  So let me apologise profusely, but both phrases are very apt descriptions of a mature, adult female humpback whale. Yesterday we tagged the oldest female in the MICS catalog, H002 or "Splish" to her friends. Believe it or not Splish is almost as old as me, and yes I know what you are thinking ..... "that's ancient!". She was first photographed back in 1980; that was the year of the Moscow Olympics, Mount Saint Helens, the Empire Strikes Back, Pac Man ......... and also the year that the American public voted in a B-Rate actor as their 40th President. In case you were wondering, I was nine in 1980.
 

But why all the excitement over a "Fat bottomed girl"? Female humpbacks are integral to the Miller Lab's "Body Condition Project", which is attempting to understand the relationship between stress, body condition and behaviour; and ultimately how this links to an individual's reproductive success. More details to come in future blogs!