Ithink we all can agree that whales are cool. I happen to think that every living species has some element of cool about it, but the coolness of whales is pretty self-evident.

Even given that general coolness, though, some whales are cooler than others. Near the top of that pantheon is the bowhead whale.

For starters, bowheads are the second-heaviest mammal on the planet, typically weighing around 100 tons, give or take. That's roughly the size of eight fully grown African elephants. Their heads are nearly 40% of their body length.

But the coolest thing about bowhead whales is their astonishing age. They are believed to be the longest-lived of all mammals, with estimates reaching up to 268 years. That's not just theory. Some Alaskan Inuits have been hunting bowheads — the only whale spe

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