Sperm whales taught each other how to avoid harpoons after they started hunting 200 years ago, according to a new study.
The research, published by the Royal Society on Wednesday, was based on newly digitized logs of American whalers, which recorded details of their North Pacific expeditions in the 19th century, such as the number of whales spotted or harpooned.
While their whale bone, ivory and blubber were in high demand and nearly 80,000 ‘travel days’ were recorded, there were only 2,405 successful whale sightings, a success rate of only 3 percent.
The study authors, cetacean researchers Professor Hal Whitehead and Dr. Luke Rendell, as well as data scientist Dr. Tim D Smith, also found that the number of harpoon attacks dropped 58 percent in less than two and a half years after she first began hunting in the region.
In Halifax, Canada, Professor Whitehead of Dalhousie University told me The Owen Sun Sound Times: “That was very remarkable. I thought there might be a drop, but not so much and not so fast.
“You usually expect it to increase as they figure things out and become more successful. That’s typically how our wildlife exploitation goes. We become more efficient as we learn how to do it.”
The study concluded that sperm whales learned how to kill, shared this information with their group and changed their behavior accordingly, exhibiting a “cultural evolution.”
The species live with their children in female-only pods or groups, which allows them to form close bonds and share tips for avoiding hunters.
The hunters recognized that the sperm whales had developed tactics to avoid them. Rather than forming defensive squares used to ward off their natural enemies, the orca, the sperm whales, understood that by swimming against the wind they could outrun the wind-powered hunter ships.
However, the advent of steam power and grenade harpoons in the later years of the 19th century meant that even the savvy sperm whale was doomed to mass slaughter.
“This was a cultural evolution, far too fast for genetic evolution,” says Whitehead.
Sperm whales have the largest brains of all animals on Earth, and the researchers emphasized that if they could adapt 200 years ago, they could likely also face the challenges of the ocean.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
More from Business Insider: