Opening Very, Very Wide

(Image from Univ. of British Columbia by way of Japan Times)

Blue and humpback whales open their mouths so wide that they can swallow "a volume of water larger than their own bodies."

Laypersons are naturally fascinated by the whales' gargantuan oral capacity, but scientists are more interested in their "stretchy nerves":

Normally, a firm collagen wall surrounds nerves and if stretched they become damaged. For example, humans can suffer from “nerve stretch injury.”

In rorqual whales, the nerves are packed into a centralized core surrounded by limber “elastin fibers.” When the whale opens its mouth the design enables the nerve fibers to unfold. The feeding whale will then gulp-up floating prey before the nerve snaps back.

Comments:
1) How little do we know what goes on in the sea around us.
2) There doesn't seem to be an immediate practical application for this discovery, but we can still dream about treatments for various nervous-system injuries or diseases.
3) After looking at whales' lunge-feeding, we are more tolerant of the behavior of our fellow human beings in the buffet line.