Southern right whales "whisper" to their offspring for not being heard



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According to a new study, Southern Right Whales females "whisper" to their offspring so as not to be submerged by their killer whale cousins.

Mothers and whalers are hiding from predators as they gravitate towards the troubled waters near the coast. Here, they shelter in the noisy surf, stay close and whisper effectively – calling gently less once per dive – to avoid attracting unwanted attention, revealed L & # 39; study.

When scientists analyzed the volume of calls from animals, they were surprised by the calm moos and grunts.


According to a study published in the newspaper, breaking waves submerged calls within a radius of a few hundred meters. It is therefore difficult for killer whales to spy on informal conversations. Journal of Experimental Biology.

"One of the first challenges was getting to know the whales in our study area," said Dr. Mia Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark, whose team visited the breeding grounds. whales in Flinders Bay, south of Western Australia.

The researchers stealthily approached whales while they rested on the surface and fixed sound recording tags that remained on the mothers on average for seven hours but remained attached to the calf for 40 minutes.

Dr. Nielsen said, "Right whales in the South are very physical with each other, calves spend a lot of time rubbing against the mother and rolling over her back, tail and rostrum."

After scoring nine whales, the team recorded 63 hours of conversations.

"It was difficult to assign calls to the calf or the mother because they are so close to each other," said Dr. Nielsen.

Although they are five to eight meters long, southern right whale calves are vulnerable to attack. The study found that low-amplitude calls reduced the risk of "alerting killer whales through eager eavesdropping of the location of newborn calf, suggesting that this acoustic cryptography could have become an anti-predator strategy. "

Right whales are so named because they were considered the "right whale" to hunt at the time of commercial whaling.

They could often be caught near the coast and would be a reliable source of whale oil, a valuable commodity of the time.

These characteristics have led to the decimation of the population and it has struggled to rebuild since.

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