How did the whale get its “moustache”? | Elsa Panciroli

Palaeontologists have uncovered clues to one of the great mysteries of whale evolution: the filter-feeding baleen

When I was in primary school, one of my favourite books was Ted Hughes' How the Whale Became. For children who persistently ask "why" about everything, Hughes provided tall tales to explain animal origins, using the bizarre logic that children's fiction thrives upon. For example: the hare grew long ears to hear the answer to its marriage proposal to the moon. Well, naturally. These stories fuelled my imagination about animal origins, albeit in an absurdist Lamarckian fashion.

We now know, thanks to Darwin, Russel Wallace, and the many great scientists since, that living things don't evolve traits in order to accomplish a goal. Traits that improve survival are passed along to an animals' offspring. The hare didn't grow his ears to listen for whispers from a high place, but an ancestor with bigger ears thanks to a random mutation, would have heard danger approaching before the other proto-hares. And so it survived to produce bigger-lugged babies.