Short Wave - Why Drones Are Catching Whale Breaths

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

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 [e-mail] 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.See 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

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 least, at plus.n.p.r.org. Sign up to unlock a bunch of perks like bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcast. 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. matters to you. Visit plus.npr.org today. Thank you. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwaver's Emily Kwong here. And producer Burley McCoy. With our biweekly Science News Roundup

featuring the host of All Things Considered. And today we have Juana Summers. Hi, I'm excited to be here and I hear that we're talking about drones collecting whale breaths. Yes. And how swearing may make you physically stronger. Plus, how bird beaks may have rapidly evolved during the COVID pandemic. Ooh, good mix this time around. Holiday gifts for you. All on this episode of Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. All right, so let's start off with these whale breaths, but first, I need some information.

How does a whale breathe? 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. Wait a second. Whales can catch colds. Yes, they can also get infected by cetacean morbillivirus. 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.

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

And the team did detect cetacean morbillivirus on the petri dishes in two groups of asymptomatic humpback whales in 2023 and in one sick-looking sperm whale in 2024. And this was the first time it was detected in this area and the first time it was detected so far north. That's lead author Elena Kosta 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 brusella, a bacteria that animals can pass to humans. The work was published in the journal BMC veterinary research. And the whales don't mind the drones?

Not really. Whales spend most of their time underwater where sound doesn't propagate near. as much as an air. And the scientists we spoke with said drones collecting blow samples are much less invasive than taking a skin sample, for example. Okay, so help me understand what this all means. What can scientists do with this information? 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. 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. Interesting. All right. Let's go to topic two, which is about the psychological.

of swearing. I'm intrigued. Are there people who study that? 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. Had to pick just one. I'm holding it. Okay. Next time you need to summon your physical strength, say one of these words. Swearing is a cheap, readily available, calorie neutral, drug-free means of self-help. This is Richard Stevens, a senior lecturer in psychology at Keele 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. And now his team at Keel 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. 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. Psychologists even have a term for this.

State disinhibition. They published these results in the journal American psychologist last week. 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? 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? 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. 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.

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. Interesting. So what I'm taking away from this is that I can use swearing strategically, that? For strength, yes. And maybe in other situations where you need a confidence boost. Well, 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 disinhibit is a good thing. 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? 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 of California, Los Angeles, or UCLA.

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. But not all of these birds look the same. Junkos in the wildlands outside L.A. have longer, more slender beaks, whereas the juncos 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.

How have they changed? Yeah, we spoke to Ellie Diamant and 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 trash cans are, you know, full of food waste. And stubbier beks 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.

Wait, help me understand this. Can evolution happen that quickly? 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. Oh, cool. So those generations of birds were more like the pre-COVID juncos. 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. Loving all of these science gifts for our holiday season. Anytime. Please come back on the show. Please have me back.

Yeah, that was fun. You can hear more of Wana and Consider This and Piers Afternoon podcast about what the news means for you. And for more science stories, just like this one, follow a shortwave on whatever app you're listening to. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and Kai McNany. It was edited by Patrick Jaron Wanton. Tyler Jones, check the facts. Maggie Luthor and Peter Elena were the audio engineers. I'm Burley McCoy.

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