You're twisting my melon man - a photo on Flickriver

You're twisting my melon man

            The melon is the name of the bulbous mass of fatty tissue found in the head of toothed whales (and dolphins and porpoises).  It is used as a sort of sound lens, focusing and modulating sounds and is used for communication and echolocation.  This is the head of a Short-finned Pilot Whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus) and they use their melons to echolocate squid in deep, dark waters, usually at night.  You can see here that the tiny eye would not be much use in locating prey in the dark.  Short-finned Pilot Whales are found in warmer, tropical waters around the planet and are highly social.  This individual was part of a group of at least forty Pilot Whales that we saw off Baja.  The scientific name Globicephala macrorhynchus translates as "spherical head with a long beak", but you will notice that this animal has scarcely any beak at all.  But John Edward Gray (1800-75) who described it was a museum scientist who noticed that its skeleton beak was relatively large compared to dolphins, but on a live animal the beak is overshadowed by the melon.

And the title?  Well it was a catchphrase used by English comedian Norman Wisdom to mean that someone was messing with his head.  But most people probably know it as the opening line of the Happy Mondays' 1990 song "Step On", which was their most successful single reaching number 5 in the UK charts.  "Twisting my melon" was also the title of their lead singer Shaun Ryder's 2011 autobiography.

Taken on: February 25, 2023

Tags:

Globicephala

macrorhynchus

Short-finned

Pilot

Whale

Melon

Mexico

Baja

spyhopping

Tim Melling « less

Sets appears in: • Baja 2023

Stats: 4,902 views / 31 comments

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