{"id":889,"date":"2009-02-04T12:28:43","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T17:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=889"},"modified":"2009-03-28T19:40:12","modified_gmt":"2009-03-28T23:40:12","slug":"the-backward-whale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=889","title":{"rendered":"The Backward Whale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you take a look at a whale or dolphin\u00e2\u20ac\u201cany whale or dolphin anywhere on Earth\u00e2\u20ac\u201cit will follow certain rules. It will have a blowhole. It will not have legs. It will have horizontal tail flukes it raises and lowers to swim (as opposed to fish that bend from side to side). And it will have been born tail first (as opposed to the head-first position of land mammals). These sorts of rules set whales and dolphins off from other living animals, but only if you look at life as it is today. If you move back in time\u00e2\u20ac\u201cespecially back between about 50 million and 40 million years ago\u00e2\u20ac\u201cthe rules collapse.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/loom\/2009\/02\/03\/the-backward-whale\/\">Read the whole story at &#8220;The Loom&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you take a look at a whale or dolphin\u00e2\u20ac\u201cany whale or dolphin anywhere on Earth\u00e2\u20ac\u201cit will follow certain rules. It will have a blowhole. It will not have legs. It will have horizontal tail flukes it raises and lowers &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=889\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-el","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":890,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=890","url_meta":{"origin":889,"position":0},"title":"My Titanoboa beats your backward whale","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Jonathan, your backward whale is wimpy. Yes, you read that right. Wimpy! The University of Florida presents Titanoboa! Partial skeletons of a new giant, boa constrictor-like snake named \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Titanoboa\u00e2\u20ac\u009d found in Colombia by an international team of scientists and now at the University of Florida are estimated to be 42\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=890#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=712","url_meta":{"origin":889,"position":1},"title":"Caf\u00c3\u00a9 Scientifique Gainesville report","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"September 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida Citizens for Science secretary Mary Bahr provided the following report on the recent Caf\u00c3\u00a9 Scientifique, Gainesville. ------------------------------ We had about 85 people show up for our tours of the Museum fossil hall and the following discussion that Kevin Folta, Joe Meert, and Johnathan Bloch started with their fascinating presentations.\u00c2\u00a0\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Science Cafes&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Science Cafes","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=19"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3304,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3304","url_meta":{"origin":889,"position":2},"title":"More reactions to Schools Without Rules article","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last weekend the Orlando Sentinel ran an article that's part of their Schools Without Rules series that investigates private schools that accept public money via various scholarships (aka vouchers):\u00c2\u00a0Private schools' curriculum downplays slavery, says humans and dinosaurs lived together. In a previous post I highlighted some reactions to the article,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3010,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3010","url_meta":{"origin":889,"position":3},"title":"News Roundup 12\/10\/17","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell wrote a piece about the new instructional materials bill we have in Florida as well as the pre-filed bill that's waiting for the next legislative session: Book-banning \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a crusade for Florida's simplest minds. And now, a new bill would allow activists to suggest new\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3010#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2443,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2443","url_meta":{"origin":889,"position":4},"title":"He&#8217;s itching for a fight","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Andrew Scholberg, a freelance writer and member of St. Augustine Catholic Church in Gainesville, wrote a guest column for the Gainesville Sun entitled Gainesville\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s evolution vs. creation saga. In it he laments the absence of any good evolution vs. creationism debate at the University of Florida since the 1980s. Back\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2443#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":61,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=61","url_meta":{"origin":889,"position":5},"title":"Darwin lives!","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Darwin the manatee that is. ST. AUGUSTINE, FL -- A male manatee, weighing half a ton, was released into the wild Friday in St. Johns County after a year long recovery from injury. ... Huey is a volunteer with Florida Fish and Wildlife. Almost exactly a year ago, Huey helped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;In the News&quot;","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}