Whales | featured news

SeaWorld Entertainment Inc.'s stock surged in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The owner of theme parks famous for water shows featuring killer whales and dolphins jumped $5.29, or 19.6 percent, to $32.29 in afternoon trading, after the company and its backers raised $702 million.

Ancient DNA shows that bowhead whales bucked the trend to survive the last Ice Age, say scientists. The demise of cold-adapted land mammals such as mammoths has been linked to rising temperatures around 11,000 years ago. But researchers were surprised to find a contrasting population boom for whales living off the coast of Britain.

What began as bizarre bird behavior has turned into something out of a horror film for threatened whales in Argentina, where seagulls have learned that pecking at the whales' backs can get them a regular seafood dinner.

South Korea on Wednesday proposed resuming whaling for scientific research, angering other Asian countries and conservationists who said the practice would skirt a global ban on whale hunting.

Can killer whales sue SeaWorld for enslavement? A lawsuit filed Wednesday by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other "next friends" of five SeaWorld killer whales takes that novel legal approach.

A couple were out sailing near South Africa's infamous Robben Island when a forty-ton whale breached and crash-landed on their yacht.

A Tokyo court on Wednesday convicted a New Zealand activist of obstructing the Japanese whaling mission in the Antarctic Ocean, sentencing him to a suspended prison term.

The massive skull and jaw of a 13-million-year-old sperm whale has been discovered eroding from the windblown sands of a coastal desert of Peru.

A veteran SeaWorld trainer was rubbing a killer whale from a poolside platform when the 12,000-pound creature reached up, grabbed her ponytail in its mouth and dragged her underwater. Despite workers rushing to help, the trainer was killed.

The greatest of all animal battles is filmed in its entirety for the first time by a BBC crew.