"Friction Ridges in Nature"

[Ernie Hamm]

This is just something unusual to some and perhaps interesting.

I was looking through the recent edition of National Geographical magazine's issue on "Whales". As I was looking at the pictures of beluga whales, I was seeing "friction ridge formations". Now, these are not friction ridges, but features in the skin of the beluga whale that show areas of ridge formations of ending ridges, ridge bifurcations, enclosures (long and short (islands)), short ridges and such appearing on the skin of the brow, neck area and junction of the forward flipper and body of a beluga whale. There was also a photograph of the underside of a beluga whale with these ridge features in the skin covering a large area of the underside.

Now there are many references and illustrations to ridges in nature, like stripes in zebra, tigers, etc., that can and are used as identification features. I have just never seen or heard of these in whales. Granted, I have not spent a lot of time looking at whales, but the appearance of 'friction' ridges just jumped out of the picture.

So, if you subscribe to National Geographic, take a look.

Back to the tar pit.

[Boyd Baumgartner]

I saw that episode!
.

Flipper.jpg

[Texas Pat]

Cute. Real cute. But who's the old guy in the black wetsuit next to me waving at the crowd?