Righty blue whales sometimes act like lefties, study finds

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Blue whales are the largest animals in the world, with bodies that can weigh as much as 25 elephants and extend over the length of a basketball court. To support their hulking bodies, the whale use various acrobatic maneuvers to scoop up many individually tiny prey, filtering the water back out through massive baleen plates. In most cases, the whales roll to the right as they capture their prey, just as most people are right-handed. But, researchers reporting in Current Biology on November 20 now show that the whales shift directions and roll left when performing 360° barrel rolls in shallow water.