A conveyor belt more than 40 miles long runs from tiny Kermit, Texas, across state borders into Lea County, New Mexico.

The study focused on a handful of baleen species — namely, gray whales, humpback whales and right whales — which display “traditional migratory patterns,” moving from colder waters in the summer to warmer waters in the winter. For example, humpbacks in the North Pacific migrate annually from the Gulf of Alaska to the coast of Hawaii.

Now we can add whale urine to that list, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications. “Lots of people think of plants as the lungs of the planet, taking in carbon dioxide, and expelling oxygen,

New research has shown that whales ferry substantial quantities of nutrients for thousands of miles in their urine and other bodily outputs.