Researchers think they may have found a way of working out how old a whale is without it having to be dead first. Until now the only way to figure out the age of some whales was to count the layers of wax in its ears, which could only be done to a dead animal. Now scientists think they can tell a whale’s age from testing dead skin flakes that it leaves in the sea. Studying the age and lives of whales for science is one of the reasons sometimes given for killing them. This research is only needed for certain species of whales that don’t have teeth, like humpback whales. The research is published in a science magazine called Nature.