Why Drones Are Catching Whale Breaths

Scientists in the Arctic are catching the exhaled breaths of whales to better understand their health. How? Drones. Whales breathe through their blowholes, which are the equivalent of nostrils on their heads. By studying the microbes in exhaled whale breaths, scientists are piecing together how deadly diseases spread in whale populations. Host Emily Kwong and producer Berly McCoy talk to All Things Considered host Juana Summers about what scientists can do with this information, from reducing stress on whales and monitoring ocean health to warning people who could be in close proximity to whales carrying zoonotic diseases. Interested in more science on charismatic megafauna? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:17Emily Kwong?

  Hey, everyone. Emily Kwong here. Just a word before today's episode. 2025 is almost over, and at NPR and our local stations, we are excited to begin a new year. This year was tough. The loss of federal funding for public media, attacks on the free press. But despite it all, we are not shying away from our jobs, from exercising the critical right to editorial independence guaranteed by the First Amendment. With your support, we will continue our work without fear or favor. And we will continue to produce a show that introduces you to new discoveries, everyday mysteries, and explains the science behind the headlines. If you're already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you. And if you're not a supporter, please become one today, before the end of the year at

• 1:02Emily Kwong?

  least, at plus.npr.org. Sign up to unlock a bunch of perks like bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcasts. Plus, you get to feel good about supporting public media while you listen. So end the year on a high note and invest in a public service that matters to you. Visit plus.npr.org today. Thank you. You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. Hey, Short Wavers. Emily Kwong here. And producer Burleigh McCoy. With our biweekly Science News roundup, featuring the hosts of All Things Considered. And today, we have Juana Summers.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm excited to be here. And I hear that we're talking about drones collecting whale breaths.

• 1:42Emily Kwong?

  Yes, and how swearing may make you physically stronger. Plus, how bird beaks may have rapidly evolved during the COVID pandemic.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Ooh, good mix this time around.

• 1:52Emily Kwong?

  Holiday gifts for you, all on this episode of Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from EasyCater, the workplace food platform. EasyCater helps organizations order food from favorite restaurants, meet dietary needs, and stay on budget with employee meal programs, flexible payment options, and 24/7 customer support, all on one platform. Learn more at easycater.com.

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• 3:18Speaker 02

  All right, so let's start off with these whale breaths, but first I need some information. How does a whale breathe?

• 3:23Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, so the air goes in and out of their blowholes, like having nostrils in their head. And the reason scientists wanted to collect breaths is because they contain clues about the whale's health, including signs of a respiratory disease.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Wait a second, whales can catch colds?

• 3:38Emily Kwong?

  Yes, they can also get infected by cetacean morebilly virus. That's a respiratory virus that has caused mass die-offs in whales and dolphins. And researchers say that using drones is a non-invasive way to study whale infection rates, which have usually only been collected once a whale has died.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Okay, so the scientists flew the drones over surfacing whales as they exhaled through their blowholes. Okay, but what did they find?

• 4:03Speaker 04

  So the team collected Arctic whale blowhole samples around Norway and Iceland, starting in 2022. So they'd fly drones close to surfacing whales and then, based on live drone footage, hover it over a whale that looked like it was about to blow. And the drone had a Petri dish attached that would catch the blow, AKA the exhale. And the team did detect cetacean morbidity virus on the Petri dishes in two groups of asymptomatic humpback whales in 2023 and in one sick-looking sperm whale in 2024.

• 4:36Speaker 05

  And this was the first time it was detected in this area and the first time it was detected so far north.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  That's lead author Elena Koshta at Nord University. She said the team also detected herpes virus in five whale groups over different years, but they didn't find avian influenza nor brucella, a bacteria that animals can pass to humans. The work was published in the journal BMC Veterinary Research.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  And the whales don't mind the drones?

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Not really. Whales spend most of their time underwater, where sound doesn't propagate nearly as much as in air. And the scientists we spoke with said drones collecting blow samples are much less invasive than taking a skin sample, for example.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Okay, so help me understand what this all means. What can scientists do with this information?

• 5:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can't really treat a sick whale in the wild, but knowing which whales are sick can help scientists prevent those viruses from jumping into people, like in Norway, where people actually swim with whales. And understanding whale health can tell scientists about ocean health. Elena says the plan is to monitor whales over several years, which will answer questions only long-term data can reveal.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  And only then we will be able to really understand the dynamics of these pathogens and how some stressors, for example pollutants or climate change, are affecting these dynamics of these diseases.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Interesting. All right, let's go to topic two, which is about the psychology of swearing. I'm intrigued. Are there people who study that?

• 6:07Speaker 04

  There are, turns out. And without breaking FCC guidelines, Wana, I want you to imagine your favorite swear word. Don't say it, just hold it in your mind.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Had to pick just one. I'm holding it.

• 6:18Emily Kwong?

  Okay, next time you need to summon your physical strength, say one of these words.

• 6:22Speaker 06

  Swearing is a cheap, readily available, calorie-neutral, drug-free means of self-help.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  This is Richard Stephens, a senior lecturer in psychology at Kiel University in the UK. And he told us scientists have long known that swearing is linked to improve physical performance, but weren't totally sure why.

• 6:41Emily Kwong?

  And now his team at Kiel and the University of Alabama in Huntsville has a possible explanation. That the choice to swear, to break social taboos and shed inhibitions through words, moves a person into a state where they act in a more disinhibited way and just go for it.

• 6:57Speaker 06

  What we're theorizing swearing does is it silences our behavioral inhibition system, which just means those stopping thoughts, voices just go a little bit quieter. So we're a bit freer to listen to the go voices and push ourselves.

• 7:14Emily Kwong?

  Psychologists even have a term for this: state disinhibition. They published these results in the journal American Psychologists last week.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Okay, I have to say I'm taking notes for the next time I go to the gym. I do want to know, though, how do they test this out exactly?

• 7:28Speaker 04

  So the researchers looked at hundreds of participants doing a chair push-up. And basically, from a seated position on a sturdy chair, participants gripped the seat and held themselves in the air as long as possible. Juana, do you want to try?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Maybe not right now. I've got a show to host, but maybe I'll try this a little bit later. So let me guess, they did this and then they just cussed up a huge storm?

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, participants did this test two times. One time, they repeated a swear word of their choice every two seconds. The other time, they repeated a neutral word of their choice every two seconds. And which test they did first was randomized.

• 8:01Emily Kwong?

  And it turns out that swearing participants held their body weight for much longer. And they also reported more positive emotion, humor, distraction, self-confidence, and psychological flow, all of which are linked to state disinhibition.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Interesting. So what I'm taking away from this is that I can use swearing strategically, then?

• 8:21Speaker 04

  For strength, yes, and maybe in other situations where you need a confidence boost.

• 8:26Speaker 06

  Whether you're afraid of public speaking, maybe when you're hesitant to negotiate a salary rise, maybe when you're shy about approaching a person you're attracted to, there are moments in life when we can overthink things and being disinhibited is a good thing.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  But definitely not in front of this microphone. Okay, I will keep all of that in mind. Let's go to our third science story. We are moving on to bird beaks. Which birds are we talking about here?

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Dark-eyed junkos, these adorable sparrows with almost perfectly round bodies and tiny little feet. Evolutionary biologist Pam Yeh studies these birds at the University of California, Los Angeles, or UCLA.

• 9:03Speaker 07

  They weigh about 15 to 20 grams, so it's not much at all. And they just pop along the ground, I know, and they hop around and they're usually together. They usually hop with somebody else.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  But not all of these birds look the same. Junkos in the wildlands outside LA have longer, more slender beaks, whereas the junkos within Los Angeles, including the birds on the UCLA campus, have shorter, stubbier beaks. But the shapes of the city bird beaks changed during COVID.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  How have they changed?

• 9:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, we spoke to Ellie Diamant, an author on this study with Pam. She says the birds that hatched at UCLA in 2021 and 2022 had longer, more slender beaks, much like the local wildland junkos. And her team thinks it has to do with campus closures. When campus is full of people, the trashcans are, you know, full of food waste and stubbier beaks could be good for foraging in that environment. But when the campus was emptier during COVID lockdown, those food resources changed, so the longer wild-type beaks may have been more advantageous.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Wait, help me understand this. Can evolution happen that quickly?

• 10:11Speaker 04

  It is a tricky question. We usually think of evolution happening over a much longer period than just two years. But Pam and Ellie say it is possible, especially because they saw the bird beaks change again once campus opened back up. Junkos born after campus got busy had stubbier, shorter beaks.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Oh, cool. So those generations of birds were more like the pre-COVID junkos?

• 10:34Speaker 04

  Exactly. An evolutionary biologist who didn't work on the paper, Alejandro Rico Guevara, says it's also possible that the changes were an example of evolution, but there are other possible explanations, like if more wild birds came into the city. Either way, he says, the study is an amazing example of how much human activity is related to shifts in nature.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Loving all of these science gifts for our holiday season.

• 10:59Emily Kwong?

  Anytime. Please come back on the show.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Please have me back.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was fun.

• 11:05Emily Kwong?

  You can hear more of Wanton Consider This, NPR's afternoon podcast, about what the news means for you.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  And for more science stories just like this one, follow Short Wave on whatever app you're listening to.

• 11:16Emily Kwong?

  This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and Kai McNeely. It was edited by Patrick Jaren Wantonanen.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Tyler Jones checked the facts. Maggie Luthar and Peter Elena were the audio engineers. I'm Burleigh McCoy.

• 11:27Emily Kwong?

  And I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.