Humpback whales may not have hands, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t handy. A new study argues the aquarian mammals should be classified as tool users, thanks to their ability to catch krill using nets made of bubbles.
For the next two years, the researchers returned for more expeditions and kept measuring the bubble nets. They ended up documenting hundreds of bubble nets over that time, created by dozens of individual whales. All the documented nets contained multiple circular rings of bubbles, with each successive ring smaller than the last.
They analyzed that data, and found the whales weren’t creating the nets haphazardly. Rather, the whales were manipulating the size and makeup of the nets in several ways, including altering their depth, and the space between bubbles. The whales were able to accomplish this by changing the rate at which they made the bubbles, while still swimming at a constant speed.
The nets created barriers that were used to corral krill, schools of fish, and other food into a small area where the whales could then feast.
The researchers argued that this behavior meets the definition of tool use, which they say is the purposeful use of an “unattached environmental object” to alter, position, or otherwise control another object or organism.
Tool crafting has been found in an assortment of species, including mammals, birds, fish, and insects, but it’s relatively rare among animals. No wonder future aliens are so desperate to talk to humpback whales.
If you’ve seen the “open ocean” tank at the Monterey Bay aquarium, 1) you probably have no idea how massive it actually is, those fish, even the slow ones, are absolutely flying (heh, swimming very quickly) around that tank. 2) you’ve kept the fish from crashing into the glass! For some reason fish see humans standing there watching them, and they know that area is not accessible to them. But when the aquarium closes for the night, for some reason the fish don’t recognize it as a “you can’t reach/swim here” zone, and they’ll crash into the viewing wall. How do aquarium staff keep them from doing this when the aquarium is closed? (They wouldn’t hire me, even at less than minimum wage, or let me stay there for free to keep the fish company) they have a big aeration tube across the bottom of the window that releases bubbles, the aquatic buddies are naturally deterred from smacking into the glass.
