Sperm whales learned to avoid human killers through social communication

Picture in early edition of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

Mother and baby sperm whales off Mauritius in the Indian Ocean

— Photo by Gabriel Barathieu

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Scientists have determined that sperm whales (think Moby Dick), under relentless attack by whalers, many from New England, in the 19th Century communicated with each other on ways to escape their killers. Whales are highly intelligent and have very well organized social cultures. We humans too often forget that we’re far from the only intelligent creatures on Earth. Indeed, we’re often not very intelligent at all

Consider this from a Royal Society report:

“Analysis of data from digitized logbooks of American whalers in the North Pacific found that the rate at which whalers succeeded in harpooning (‘striking’) sighted whales fell by about 58% over the first few years of exploitation in a region. … The initial killing of particularly vulnerable individuals would not have produced the observed rapid decline in strike rate. It appears that whales swiftly learned effective defensive behaviour. Sperm whales live in kin-based social units. Our models, show … that learned defensive measures from grouped social units with experience could lead to the documented rapid decline in strike rate. This rapid, large-scale adoption of new behaviour enlarges our concept of the spatio-temporal dynamics of non-human culture.’’

How much have the whales learned from their groups on how to avoid collisions with ships and fishing-line entanglements, or how to find new sources of food as mankind changes the ocean environment

To read more, please hit this link. 

Map showing the distribution of sightings of sperm whales. Sperm whales can be found in virtually any part of the ocean not covered by ice, but are most often spotted in certain "grounds" where they like to feed or breed.

— Kurzon

In the Bourne Building of the New Bedford Whaling Museum