Off the coast of northern Canada, on the very edge of the Arctic Circle, there is a bay where whales gather. Each summer bowhead whales come here en masse, and will do throughout their 200-year lifespan.
This is strange because their food, zooplankton, do not. Now biologists think they know what is drawing the whales to the shallow waters of Cumberland Sound year after year: their beauty regime.
Beneath the surface of the water in this particular inlet there are a lot of rocks, and researchers found that the bowhead whales that congregate there are using them to exfoliate.
Whales are known to shed their skin but many biologists had assumed that they did so continuously. However, there are good reasons why Arctic whales such