A Whale of a Tale

I am assuming that Uncle Ken's anthropomorphic rendering of his whale story is inspired by creative license, and that he knows that whales did not really evolve on purpose.  The only creature I know of that ever made a deliberate attempt to influence its own evolution was humans.  The science behind it was called eugenics, but it was eventually abandoned after Hitler gave it a bad name.  Then there's genetic engineering, there's no telling where that might lead us.  They are already making fake meat from genetically engineered yeast.  I understand that this fake meat is indistinguishable from real meat, but I'll never know for sure because I have no intention of ever eating that shit.

I remember seeing some whales on TV once that were working together to drive their prey into a tight school by blowing bubbles, and then plowing through it with their mouths open.  I think the food was herring, but I suppose it would work with krill as well.   (I am not making this up.)

Another time I saw a show on PBS about a pod of killer whales in England, or maybe it was New England, that had learned to hunt other whales with human assistance.  They would chase and harass a larger whale for awhile, and then some of them would break off and go get some human help from this coastal fishing village.  The humans would launch their boats and the killer whales would lead them to the targeted whale.  All the humans wanted was the blubber to make oil, so the killer whales got everything else.  This was supposed to be a true documentary, not a work of fiction.  All the men that had participated in this enterprise were dead by then, but they interviewed their descendants, some of whom claimed to have personally witnessed it in their youth.  They said that this had gone on for years until, one year, the killer whales stopped coming around for unknown reasons.