“Helicopters collect whale snot from blowholes.”

For starters, anytime you see the word snot used in the headline of a news story published by a major news organization, I suggest you read it. Over the years I found that there are few disappointing articles that use snot in the headline.

Besides, it is a hard word to ignore. There are many words that get tossed into headlines so often we barely notice them anymore. These words include scandal, murder, attack, bombing, war, sex, bribery, stabbing, tragedy, market crash, Joe the Plumber, etc.

The list goes on and on. In a perfect world, any of these words should make us sit up and think, “Oooh, this sounds important. I better read it and become a well informed citizen.” But through overuse, none of the above words have a fraction of the power to draw in readers as does that simple four letter word for expectorated mucus.

The next thing that works in the headline is the curious pairing of two seemingly unrelated objects: helicopters and whales. Two items that taken separately most guys would admit are pretty cool, but when taken together can make the male brain jitter with excitement.

Immediately, images came to my mind of tough ex-Army Blackhawk pilots swooping down then hovering precariously over whale blowholes to collect the snot, sometimes with their bare hands. I also imagined the music from that famous helicopter scene in Apocalypse Now, “Ride of the Valkyries,” playing.

Unfortunately, I must tell you that the headline was a bit misleading. As it turns out real helicopters are not routinely used for the collection of whale snot. Small, remote-controlled helicopters are used instead. Petri dishes are attached upside down to the bottom of these miniature helicopter so when it passes through the blowhole stream, the snot gets stuck to the dish. Pleasant, isn’t it? The helicopters are controlled by scientists on a nearby boat.

Two thoughts came to mind when I learned this. The first is that this is exactly the type of story parents trying to convince their children not to spend all day playing video games dread. It actually offers a practical use for spending hours mastering a game controller. The only bright side is that these kids rarely read news stories, so they will probably never know about it. Unless someone tells them. So keep this to yourself.

The second thought I had was that scientists today are having way too much fun. I distinctly recall in college never being told that I could get a biology degree and one day wind up operating a remote controlled helicopter in the middle of the ocean to collect whale sneezes.

If I had known, I might have taken a different career path. Although, my wife is a biologist and so I know first hand that she rarely operates remote controlled helicopters in the lab. Weeks can go by between opportunities. But she does get to use centrifuges all the time, so that is really neat.

I take back what I wrote earlier. In the hope of steering more young people into the field of science, we should tell them that they might follow in the footsteps of great scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Isaac Newton who also used their video game skills to advance our knowledge of the world.

You might be wondering what purpose is actually served collecting whale snot and whether or not this is the sort of thing our federal tax dollars should pay for. Well, I don’t know the answer about the tax dollars, although the researcher is from London and the University of Mexico was mentioned, so maybe it’s not a Whale Snot to Nowhere issue for Americans.

As for the purpose, scientists hope to identify the bacteria and microbes living in the body of a healthy whale. At least that’s what they claim. The real reason they do it, I suspect, is not something to sneeze at. Or maybe it is.

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