The northern right whale is as big as a house and has a face only a mother could love, but it has no worries in the dating department. In fact, the species that old-time whalers dubbed the "right" one to kill is a 80-tonne sex fiend, its females promiscuous and its males adorned with the largest testes in the animal kingdom (together, they weigh nearly a tonne).
Truly homely, the right whale has a head that takes up a third of its body length and is covered with "callosities," unsightly raised patches of discoloured skin whose only saving grace seems to be the fact that each pattern is unique and can be used to identify its owner.
But when in the mood for love, the massive creature will gather, as many as 50 at a time, to take part in what scientists call "surface active groups," but look very much like orgies to the rest of us. Often, one female will call several males, equipped with three-metre penises, to her side and then lounge on her back as the object of their affection for as long as six hours.
Clearly, they're a frisky lot - and it's a good thing too.
For decades, the northern right has been the most vulnerable of the world's whales, near the top of almost every list of animals considered doomed to extinction. By the time hunting was banned in the 1930s, a population in the North Atlantic that had once numbered many thousand had dwindled to a couple of hundred at best. Even more alarming, half a century later, it was still struggling just to hold its own and many researchers feared that the species was doomed.
But this year, scientists are walking with a spring in their step. The cause: a significant cetacean baby boom. This winter saw a record crop of 39 calves born in the northern right's maternity ward off Florida and Georgia (which considers the whale its state animal).
For a creature that is endangered, every birth counts, and this year's tally is not only 25 per cent higher than the old record - 31, set in 2001 - it's a massive increase from 2000, when just one baby survived. Since that dismal low, more than 20 calves have been born on average every year, roughly double the annual crop in the 1990s.
NO EASY ANSWERS
The boom is "incredible" news to Laurie Murison, head of New Brunswick's Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station. "Most people are very excited."
But it's also a bit of a mystery, says Bradley White, a geneticist at Trent University in Peterborough who has studied the whale. "I don't think any one would have predicted what has happened. ... It's a surprise."
Food may be the answer. After giving birth in the warm south, the northern right heads north to spend the summer feeding off Cape Cod and southern Nova Scotia and in the Bay of Fundy. Scientists suspect recent years have seen an abundance of what they eat - tiny krill-like creatures known as copepods, which they strain from the sea using baleen, the comb-like strands they have instead of teeth.
Ms. Murison says the better food supply may be due to long-term fluctuations in the North Atlantic Oscillation, an El Nino-type phenomenon that is a major cause in the variability of winter storms in the region. The improved diet allows females to pack on enough blubber to withstand the rigours of reproduction. Newborn calves weigh more than 1,000 kilograms, as much as a small car, and nursing mothers can lose 10 to 30 per cent of their weight in a year.
