The lecture will be livestreamed from Aarhus University. Free admission, support your cinema.*

Language: Danish
Break: 20 minutes
Lecturers: by sensory physiologist Peter Teglberg Madsen

Whales are the largest animals to have ever lived on Earth, and with their extreme adaptations to life in the water, they are some of the most unique mammals. They have been seen as floating oil reservoirs and hunted to near extinction, but today there is a growing understanding that marine ecosystems are completely dependent on whales as top predators.

For many years, scientists have only been able to gain insight into the lives of whales by studying them during the short time they are at the ocean surface or by dissecting dead whales and guessing how they live. But new technology, with drones and measuring equipment attached to the whales with suction cups, now gives scientists unique opportunities to study the biology of whales while they hunt at great depths far out at sea.

During the lecture, we will take the world's smallest whale, the porpoise, on a hunt in Danish waters, and with deep-sea cameras we will try to understand how the world's largest toothed whale, the sperm whale, finds food while hunting at a depth of more than 1,000 meters. You will also hear about how a bowhead whale avoids freezing to death while feeding on billions of tiny prey in Disko Bay, and how a humpback whale mother can give birth and nurse a calf without eating anything for six months. Along the way, we will also shed light on how we can live in sustainable coexistence with these important top predators in a changing world in the future.

This is an updated version of a lecture from the spring semester 2019.

Read more at ofn.au.dk/abstract/171.
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*Note from the organizers at Aarhus University: your local cinema has generously provided its cinema hall and staff free of charge for this screening. Please support them financially by, for example, using their café/kiosk.

ABOUT THE LECTURE SERIES:
The lecture is streamed live from the Søauditorierne in Aarhus and is part of the series Public Lectures in Natural Sciences organized by Aarhus University in collaboration with several hundred locations across the country. The lecture series is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation.

The lecture lasts two hours including a 20-minute break and a session at the end where the lecturer answers selected questions submitted during the lecture by the audience via SMS.
The lecture is and will not be publicly available on the internet.