Whales are famous for a lot of different things . drown keen distances , dancing , jaunt to the health club – whalekind has a lot of put-on up their considerable whale sleeve . However novel inquiry could add up to that list with the hypothesis they might be passably enceinte at long - distance relationships too .
Bowhead hulk ( Balaena mysticetus)were hunted extensively for oil and whalebone in the 1800s and other 1900s , but have since made acomeback . They are also remember to be able to live up to200 years , make them the long - livingmarine mammal . Beyond these points , however , little is know about exactly how these great creatures forage and socialise .
To find out more about what these whales get up to , a team of researchers tagged 12 Balaena mysticetus in Disko Bay on the western coast of Greenland and studied 144 days of diving event records .
The researchers tagged the whales to record dive data.Image Credit: © Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen
While their behavior may look disorderly , their analysis showed a 24 - hour cycle of diving during the spring months . The whale were line up to plunge down to the deepest point in the afternoon , which then allowed them to track their quarry up to the surface of the pee . This conduct is experience as the diel vertical migration . Bowhead whales arebaleen whalesthat filter - provender marine invertebrates , include krill and crustacean .
The paper authors described the whales as " chaotic ego - affirm oscillator " that balance diving at deepness for solid food and remain near the surface to pass off . They found that at least 8 of the 12 whales tagged were performing this diel diving behavior . This is interchangeable to the behavior of blue whales , which are know to track the migration of their target through the water chromatography column , rising to the surface at nighttime . This ties in with possibility that suggest calling to other heavyweight at depth is energetically high-priced to the whales .
“ We find that foraging whale dive deeper during the daylight in spring , with this diving behavior being in apparent synchrony with their vertically migrating prey , ” said Professor Mads Peter Heide - Jørgensen at the Department of Birds and Mammals , Greenland Institute of Natural Resources , in astatement . “ Until now , this has n’t been show for spring , and remained contradictory for fall . ”
The second potential find from the research is even more remarkable . The squad watch two whales that seemed to dive in sync , despite at sentence being around 100 kilometre ( 62 miles ) aside .
Over the course of the hebdomad , the pair – one female ( BW05 ) and another whale of nameless gender ( BW10 ) – were sometimes as close as 5 klick ( 3.1 miles ) and sometimes hundreds of kilometers apart , and seemed to be synching their dives to occur at the same time of Clarence Day . The depth that the whales dove to were not synched , potentially because of departure in individual foraging strategies and vertical target distribution . The squad suggests that diving and calling together even many kilometers apart could also be a predator turning away scheme to obviate killer whales or to reinforce social bonds .
While the whales were physically apart , the researchers believe that they remained withinhearing rangeof each other , though thewhale noiseswere not recorded .
“ Without direct observations , such as recording of the two whales , it is n’t potential to determine that the individuals were exchanging calls , ” said Professor Jonas Teilmann at the Department of Ecoscience , Aarhus University , nevertheless , “ the observed subsurface behavior might be the first grounds supporting the acoustical ruck hypothesis of foresightful - range signal in baleen whales proposed by Payne and Webb back in 1971 . ”
This afford up the possibility that while the whales appear to be alone they could be diving with their foresighted - length besties .
“ The possibility of acoustically tie in whales , which seem to be diving alone but are actually together , is judgement flex . Our field of study identifies a model for studying the sociality and behavior of such chaotically moving , mad marine creature , and we encourage the research community to collect more simultaneous tag data to confirm if our rendering is appropriate , ” Associate Professor Evgeny A. Podolskiy at the Arctic Research Center , Hokkaido University concluded .
The paper is published in the journalPhysical Review Research .
