Whale euthanasia: vets learn to kill stranded leviathans humanely | Jason Goldman

Putting beached whales out of their misery is dangerous, difficult work and chemicals used in the past can poison the ecosystemOn 26 January 2009, veterinarian Craig Harms and his team were called to a beach on North Carolina's Outer Banks where a two-year-old male right whale calf was stranded. Harms is a professor of aquatic, wildlife and zoologic medicine at North Carolina State University, and as part of his job he sometimes gets called out to examine beached whales. When they're too ill or too injured to survive, whales sometimes seem to strand themselves intentionally on our shores.Most of the whales are already dead by the time Harms arrives, and in those cases, he and his colleagues collect samples, conduct an autopsy to see if they can determine the cause of death, and dispose of the body. It's a fairly routine matter, he says, though "a big and complicated routine," to be sure. "The carcass of a whale is kind of a big, collapsed, fatty, bloody mass of tissue that gets gradually more ripe on a hot day, that we just have to work through. There is no personality there."In this instance, the right whale was still alive, but it was too late to rescue it. While veterinarians usually wait for several high tides to see if the whale can save itself, the prospects are usually grim.It's the sheer size of these critters that makes aiding them a challenge for wildlife veterinarians. In most cases, all that a vet can hope to do is provide a quick, painless, humane death. "Euthana...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: theguardian.com Blogposts Biology Marine life Cetaceans Whales Animals Zoology Environment Science Wildlife Source Type: news