I seem to recall an interesting anatomical feature in a whale&#x27;s mouth or tongue, highly vascularised, whose function isn&#x27;t fully understood. One thought I&#x27;ve had is that this is a heat-transfer interface, and part of the whale&#x27;s temperature regulation system.<p>Whales consume <i>prodigious</i> amounts of energy, <i>and that is largely trapped within its body mass</i>. I suspect that thermal management is actually a fair part of their design challenge. Even humans in fairly cool water can have difficulty keeping sufficiently <i>cool</i>, and experienced long-distance open-water swimmers have died <i>of heat exhaustion</i> in warm water (a case occurred in the Middle-East a few years back).<p>PS: <i>love</i> Geoffrey West (and the rest of the Santa Fe Institute crowd).