“Microbes in the breath of North Atlantic right whales contain valuable information about the animals’ health, a new study has found.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts used drones to capture spray from the blowholes of the endangered species. They then analyzed the bacteria in the spray and connected that information with other data to gain a clearer picture of the health of individual whales.

‘This is really exciting because we may have just found another way to conduct health checkups of these critically endangered whales,’ says Carolyn Miller, a research associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the lead author of the study, published this month in the journal International Society for Microbial Ecology.”

From CBC.