Ice Age bowhead whales' survival surprises scientists

Ancient DNA shows that bowhead whales bucked the trend to survive the last Ice Age, say scientists.

The demise of cold-adapted land mammals such as mammoths has been linked to rising temperatures around 11,000 years ago.

But researchers were surprised to find a contrasting population boom for whales living off the coast of Britain.

Their study is also the first to discover that the ocean giants lived in the southern North Sea.

(Read the entire article at BBC here.)
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Wow.  The warm-blooded mammal whales lived through the previous Ice Age while wolly mammoths did not.  Was water less cold than land during the Ice Age, such that bowhead whales were able to adapt and survive?  Or had they thicker insulating blubber that beat the thick coat of hair of the wolly mammoths hands down?

Scientists had postulated possibilities for the whales adaptability in the journal Nature Communications, but these are hypothesis.

I've never seen a live whale before, only deep fried pieces of its flesh in a Japanese eatery along the Boso valley coast.  But they are certainly fascinating creatures, from books I've read about them.  Sadly, the study by Dr Andy Foote from the Natural History Museum of Denmark suggested that climate change could prove to be an additional threat to the survival of whales.  What he did not explicitly articulate, was that humans have always been a threat, not only to other animals, but most unfortunately, to themselves.  Witness how humans' farming and mining methods have caused great repercussions to ourselves.