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Humpback Whales Sometimes Hold Their Mouths Open for No Clear Reason. Tourists Are Helping Scientists Understand the Rare Behavior
Key takeaways
- Hannah Pittore Humpback whales sometimes hang out with their mouths wide open for no apparent reason.
- In a study published in the May issue of the journal Animal Behavior and Cognition, researchers collected dozens of observations of the rarely seen behavior captured by tourists and posted on social media.
- “Concentrated prey, either fish or krill on the surface, is being taken in by [the whale] coming from the depth and lunging out with a wide-open mouth,” he says.
Hannah Pittore Humpback whales sometimes hang out with their mouths wide open for no apparent reason. To figure out why they engage in the energetically costly behavior, researchers turned to an unusual source for help: social media.
In a study published in the May issue of the journal Animal Behavior and Cognition, researchers collected dozens of observations of the rarely seen behavior captured by tourists and posted on social media. The trove of data highlights the value of citizen scientists and helped the team propose some possible purposes of humpback gaping, such as communication, stretching and play.
Humpbacks and other whales with baleen—bristle-like structures in their mouths that act like sieves—usually open their jaws when eating, says Olaf Meynecke, a marine ecologist at Griffith University in Australia, who did not participate in the study, to the Guardian’s Ima Caldwell.