h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are probably many ways to age our blubbery friends, but the method I'm thinking of will be immediately apparent to those seeking an 'interesting' answer.

Does this apply to *all* whales, or just some? If they're wearing a school uniform, presumably they're over 5?

Read its birthday cards

Well you do get schools of whales I suppose, but I've never understood the porpoise of them. What good is a GCSE in Meedja Studies if your flippers can't pick out the keys on a keyboard?

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Is this a new sub-genre called 'Quite Atrocious'? Sheesh..

cut it open and count it's rings

Ooh, pretty close. But count the rings of what exactly?

on its teeth

or ear if they have no teeth

mmmmm

what does that mean?

My keyboard was stuck.

You're hot on the trail Cal, just a little more thinking to go...

ok, to be precise, counting the growth layers in the dentin of the tooth (thats if your brave enough to stick your head in a whales mouth ) or counting the growth layers on the wax of the external ear.

Oh well done

Whales deposit a new layer of ceratin (ear wax) each year so it's possible to calculate age by counting the layers of earwax.

This is only possible because a whale's flippers are too large to poke around in it's ears.

Quite simple really - go after the whale, the further and faster it swims away from you the older it will probably be. You're unlikely to be able to convince a whale that all you REALLY want to do with it is find out its age. Whales have long memories... all the things we've done to them so far have been unpleasant, and involved exploding harpoons.