The famous 19th-century literature Moby Dick was inspired by the whaling industry during that time. However, hunting sperm whales was harder than Moby Dick showed it to be.
A study of whale-hunting records, entitled "Adaptation of sperm whales to open-boat whalers: rapid social learning on a large scale?" published by the Royal Society, showed that sperm whales were not only capable of learning the best ways to avoid whalers, but they also share information with other whales.
Sperm Whales Sharing Information To Fellow Whales
Based on the newly-digitized logbooks that whalers keep while whale hunting in the North Pacific Ocean, the researchers found that the whalers' harpoons fell by 58% in just a few years. That is because sperm whales learned from their fellow whales the fatal encounters with humans, Live Science reported.
Study lead author and biology professor Hal Whitehead from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia said that at first, sperm whales treated human threat as they would the killer whales, their natural predator. But soon they learned that it will not work on humans and some of them learned the best ways to evade whalers.
The whalers wrote in their logbooks that sperm whales that survived quickly adapted to this new method and seemed to have informed other whales as well. Instead of resorting to old tactics, sperm whales learned to swim fast upwind away from the wind-powered vessels of the whalers.
The researchers said that whale communities learned from each other rapidly and soon these lessons were integrated into their wider culture.
"We suggest that naive social units learned defensive measures from grouped experienced social units and adopted them," the researchers said.
"Encounters with whalers typically lasted hours, and sperm whales through their echolocation and communication systems can probably sense and coordinate behavior over ranges of several kilometers," the study said.
Sperm whales are known to be great intel sharers as they are highly observant and communicative mammals. Also, each family unit only stays in larger groups for a few days at a time, which makes sharing of information fast.
Threats to Whales On the 21st Century
When whalers started venturing out to the oceans in search of the vast profits and fortunes that whale oil offers, whale populations also decimated as the distant whaling grounds were exploited.
The legacy of that era stands in sharp focus in the 21st century, a time where climate change and ubiquitous plastic contamination are a growing concern.
According to Oxford University's website, the increasing intensity of human activities in the marine environment exposes whales to lethal entanglement in fishing gear, ship strikes, pollution, drastic changes in the marine ecosystem driven by climate change, and despite restrictions, there is still the continuous commercial whaling.
No matter how smart sperm whales might be, The Guardian reported that there is one modern threat that they could not avoid and that is noise pollution.
Check out more news and information on Whales on Science Times.
