Catching one sperm whale in the 19th century it was much more difficult than even Moby Dick had shown. That’s because sperm whales were not only able to learn the best ways to avoid the whalers’ ships, they were also able to quickly share this information with other whales, according to a survey of data on the whaling.
By analyzing newly digitized logs kept by whalers on their hunting voyages in the North Pacific, the researchers found that the number of hunters’ attacks on their targets decreased by 58% in just a few years. And it wasn’t because the whalers had gotten worse at landing their harpoons – the mammals had learned from their fellow whales’ deadly encounters with humans, and they wouldn’t repeat them, the researchers explained.
Initially, the whales responded to the new threat from human hunters in exactly the same way as the killer whale, which was their only predator at the time, “lead author Hal Whitehead, a professor of biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, told Live Science.”[The sperm whales] they all gathered on the surface, put the baby in the middle, and tried to defend themselves by biting or knocking their tails down. But when it comes to fending off Captain Ahab, that’s the worst thing they could do, they made themselves a very big target. ‘
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The whales seem to have learned from their mistakes, and those who survived adapted quickly – instead of resorting to old tactics, the whalers wrote in their logs, the sperm whales instead chose new ones, while quickly swam against the wind, away from the winds of the whalers. powered ships.
It appears that these clever tactics, developed by individual whales, quickly spread across the whaling community, with whales learning successful escape techniques from each other, the research team found. Soon, even individuals who had never been attacked learned to follow the lead of those who had.
The whales quickly communicated and learned from each other, and the lessons were soon integrated into their wider culture across the region, according to the researchers’ interpretation of the data.
“Each whale group you encounter at sea is usually made up of two or three family units, and the units often split off to form other groups,” Whitehead said. “So what we think happened is that one or two of the units that make up the group could have had encounters with humans before, and the ones that didn’t accurately copied from their friends who did.”
Sperm whales are excellent information sharers: their highly observant, communicative nature and the fact that each family unit stays in larger groups for only a few days at a time means they can transmit information quickly.
As studies show, that information could be news of new threats, new ways to hunt, or new songs to sing.
An example of whales’ extraordinary ability to share information is lob-tail feeding, in which a humpback whale hits the surface of the water with its tail, submerges to blow disorienting bubbles around its prey, and then enters the prey. picks up mouth. Researchers first saw this tactic used by a single whale in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 1980, before spreading to the regional population in just 10 years.
Whale culture also goes much deeper than innovative ways to feed. “Sperm whales are divided into acoustical cultural climates,” said Whitehead. “They split into large clans, each with their own sonar click pattern, like a dialect, and they only form groups with members of the same clan.”
Different whale clans each have different ways of singing, moving, hunting, and caring for their calves. These differences are deep enough to even give some clans a survival advantage during El Niño events, Whitehead said.
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Survival against impossible odds is a defining feature of whales’ history, and will be even more so as threats to their existence grow. In the 20th century, whales, especially the 13 species that belong to the ‘big whales’ category – became like blue whales, sperm whales and humpback whales – were chased by steamships and grenade harpoons from which they could not escape. The number of whales plummeted and they were soon threatened with extinction. With commercial whaling largely illegal, many large whale populations have recovered, but they still face the increasing destabilization of their habitats due to industrial fishing, noise disturbance and climate change
Whitehead wants to delve deeper into the ways different whale cultures are expressed, including the benefits that having one culture over another can help a clan survive.
“Like humans, you can get whales with a more conservative culture or with a more innovative culture, and we’re really interested in ways of looking at these things,” Whitehead said.
The researchers published their findings online March 17 in the journal Biology Letters
Originally published on Live Science.