Mondo Knows Facts
A dead whale feeds a community for decades
A whale fall supplies scavengers and bacteria for up to 50 years Sleeper sharks and hagfish strip the soft tissue first, then worms and crustaceans take the scraps. Bacteria break down fats in the bones for years. The same species also live at hydrothermal vents, which suggests a link between the two habitats. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: whales, ecosystems, deep-sea
A dead whale feeds a community for decades: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- A whale fall supplies scavengers and bacteria for up to 50 years. The figure is taken from NOAA Ocean, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a animals fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.