An Australian blogger accidentally filmed the tail of a frozen whale in the open sea. VIDEO
[ad_1]
An Australian TikTok blogger filmed a humpback whale doing a rare headstand in the open sea. Blogger Brody Moss was paddling a kayak when a whale’s tail suddenly appeared in front of him, writes Science alert. “My heart is beating so fast. I think it’s a whale’s tail. It just went up and it’s not going anywhere. I don’t even know what to say,” the blogger says in the video. Paddling back to keep his distance, Moss saw a baby whale swimming around his tail. The blogger then lowered the camera underwater to show the baby resting its head on the chest of an adult whale, most likely its mother. Such a strange “tail up” position impressed not only Moss and his fans on TikTok. Scientists have been trying to figure out what this pose means for decades. Because the whale’s tail resembles a sail when it sticks out of the ocean, this behavior of the animal is sometimes called “sail tailing.” Humpback, gray, bowhead and smooth whales demonstrate a “sailing tail”. Moss did not say where he shot his footage, but he is a member of the YBS Youngbloods team, which produces ocean media content on the Western Australian coast between Exmouth and Broome. A whale watching company in Western Australia also caught one of these special events on camera in 2019 and 2020. However, Australia is not the only region of the world where humpbacks demonstrate this behavior. Off the coast of Brazil, researchers between 1989 and 2000 occasionally saw a “tail trick” that lasted from a few seconds to 12 minutes. The behavior was observed in single whales, mothers and once in a pregnant female. When mother whales exhibited this behavior, their young usually swam around them, as Moss observed in Australia. One female was “caught” off the coast of Brazil breastfeeding a cub with its tail raised. However, feeding can also occur in other positions, so this does not fully explain the behavior. In 2016, a drone spotted the tail of a humpback whale that hovered above the surface for more than 10 minutes. A whale researcher said at the time that this behavior could be related to rest. Just as humpback whales can sleep upright in the water column, a female can turn upside down to rest and watch over her young. Tail wagging can also be a cool-down trick. In theory, a warm-blooded whale can regulate its temperature by sticking its bottom to the surface. Moss hopes his latest footage will help scientists better understand whale behavior. Read also: Remains of an unknown whale 41 million years old were discovered in Egypt
[ad_2]
Original Source Link
