An analysis of the stomach contents of a dead whale that washed ashore in Alaska reveals it had eaten sea otters, 1,000 seabird feathers, seaweed and rocks.
Biologist Lori Quakenbush of Alaska's Arctic Marine Mammal Program in Fairbanks said the analysis gave scientists a rare chance to catalog exactly what one of the ocean's top predators had to eat, reported the Anchorage Daily News Monday.
Whales were not believed to be consumers of smaller prey, partly because they offer so little nutritional payoff for 10-ton predators. But the snatching of otters or small birds might be an alterative to starvation, according to biologists Craig Matkin and Lance Barrett-Lennard with the North Gulf Oceanic Society in Homer.
The 23-foot whale carcass was grounded in Latouche Passage in April 2003, too decomposed to be identified. But the whale's 3-foot-long, 70-pound, multi-chambered stomach was frozen and sent to Quakenbush's lab for examination.
The findings have been submitted for publication.
© Copyright 2004 by United Press International
