Emily Kwong

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, short wavers, Emily Kwong here.

And producer Burleigh McCoy.

With our bi-weekly science news roundup featuring the hosts of All Things Considered.

And today we have Juana Summers.

Yes, and how swearing may make you physically stronger.

Plus, how bird beaks may have rapidly evolved during the COVID pandemic.

Holiday gifts for you, all on this episode of Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

Yes.

They can also get infected by cetacean morbillivirus.

That's a respiratory virus that has caused mass die-offs in whales and dolphins.

And researchers say that using drones is a non-invasive way to study whale infection rates, which have usually only been collected once a whale has died.

That's lead author Elena Costa at Nord University.

She said the team also detected herpes virus in five whale groups over different years, but they didn't find avian influenza nor Brucella, a bacteria that animals can pass to humans.

The work was published in the journal BMC Veterinary Research.

Yeah, you can't really treat a sick whale in the wild, but knowing which whales are sick can help scientists prevent those viruses from jumping into people, like in Norway, where people actually swim with whales.

And understanding whale health can tell scientists about ocean health.

There are, turns out.

And without breaking FCC guidelines, Juana, I want you to imagine your favorite swear word.

Don't say it.