the.com/blubber
nature's wetsuit, packed so tight it doubles as a calorie bank for lean winters
means A thick layer of insulating fat under the skin of whales, seals, and other marine mammals — or, as a verb, to weep noisily and messily.
from From Middle English 'bluber,' meaning a bubble or the foaming, frothing of water — likely imitative, echoing the sound of liquid churning. The word first described bubbling and frothing, then drifted to mean swelling and the puffy, sobbing of a tearful face ('to blubber'), and finally — by way of that bloated, wobbling quality — settled on the fatty wobble of whale tissue. So the sobbing sense came first; the whale-fat sense is the later cousin.
- thickness
- bowhead whale blubber can reach 20 inches
- two jobs
- insulates and stores energy at once
- lamp fuel
- whale blubber once lit city streetlights
- buoyancy
- its fat helps whales float effortlessly
- warm blood
- keeps core heat while surrounded by ice water
whale blubber layer — bowhead whales have up to 20 inches of blubber insulating them in arctic waters
seal hunting inuit — inuit peoples hunted seals for blubber as primary caloric source for centuries in the arctic
try works whaling — 19th century whaling ships used try works furnaces to render whale blubber into oil aboard ship