Whales have been in the ocean longer than humans have walked the earth

Humpback whale breaching photograph from National Geographic

It is thought that the ancestors of today's whales first became fully aquatic about 45 million years ago.

That is at least 40 million years earlier than our most readily recognizable ancestors and so far ahead of the creation of Japanese society that the Government of Japan should be ashamed of its pretence that the state-sponsored annual whale kills are anything but commercial slaughter.