Animals: Why Whales Die

Whales are mammals. They do not have gills but lungs, must breathe air in order to maintain life. Therefore a whale out of water is not, like a fish, deprived of a necessary element. When a school of dead whales was recently found on the Australian coast. Dr. William Alexander Osborne, dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of Melbourne, put this question to his learned colleagues: "Why do stranded whales die?" From his learned colleagues, according to his report in Nature last week, he received the following answers:

1) "The blood...