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Estimating Birth Rates of Humpback Whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
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More 2s than yellow 1s #5

Open Edderic opened 5 years ago

Edderic commented 5 years ago

@rsullivan-lord Are new calves always recorded in a new column? In other words, if a mom gives birth, does the calf always get included in a new row? It seems to me that that there are a lot more "2"s but not a lot of yellow "1"s. Why is that?

screenshot from 2019-02-25 21-23-08

rsullivan-lord commented 5 years ago

Great question. No, new calves are not always recorded in a new column. We give each whale a number (HXXX) when we have photo-ID'd it the first time. So if we're able to get a photo of the calf's fluke the year it's a calf it'll get a number and a yellow 1, but we don't necessarily get the calf's photo because they just don't usually show their tail flukes as a baby and then we don't always see them back in our study area in another year (either they died, or went to another feeding ground). Also, this is just whales that are known females, or that we've gotten a biopsy sample for and have extracted the DNA to figure out the sex of the animal. We know the sex of most animals in the population, but not all.

Edderic commented 5 years ago

Oh ok. Thanks for clarifying. :+1: