Killed whales trapped in video that are prepared with rear algae after teacher

Killer whales They have been trapped in the video that broke the algae to rub and prepare, the scientists announced on Monday, in what they said it is the first evidence of marine mammals that make their own tools.

Humans are far from being the only member of the animal kingdom that has dominated the use of tools. The chimpanzees adhere to fashion to fish for the termites, the crows create hooked twigs to catch larvae and elephants, the flies with branches.

The use of tools in the difficult oceans of the world is more rare, however, it is known that marine otters crush open seafood with rocks, while octopuses can make mobile houses with coconut peel.

A study published in the Current Biology magazine describes a new example of using tools for a population of critical orcs.

Scientists have been monitoring the southern resident orcas in Sea Salish, between the Canadian province of British Columbia and the state of Washington, for more than 50 years.

Rachel John, a master’s student at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, said at a press conference that she first noticed “something strange” while looking at images of drone cameras last year.

The researchers backed away from old images and were surprised to discover that this behavior is quite common, documenting 30 examples for eight days.

A whale would wear its teeth to break a piece of bull algae, which is strong but flexible like a garden hose.

Then he would put the relief between his body and the body of another whale, and they would rub between them for several minutes.

The couple forms a “s” shape to keep the algae placed among their bodies while they roll.

“Skin maintenance behaviors”

It is known that whales have fun through algae in a practice called “Kelping”.

It is believed that they do this in part by fun, partly to use algae to scrub their bodies to remove dead skin.

The international team of researchers described the new “Allokelping” behavior, which means Kelping with another whale.

“We presume that the rent is similar to the maintenance behaviors of the skin exhibited by other cetaceans,” the researchers wrote.

They discovered that killer whales with more dead skin were more likely to participate in the activity, warning that it was a small sample size.

Whales also tend to match family members or others of a similar age, which suggests that the activity has a social element.

The scientists said it was the first known example of a tool for manufacturing marine mammals.

Janet Mann, a biologist at the University of Georgetown not involved in the study, praised the investigation, but said that “it was a bit too far” in some of his statements.

The bottle nose dolphins that use sea sponges to drag for dams could also be considered manufacturing tools, he told News.

And it could be argued that other whales known for using bubble networks or mud feathers to hunt represent the use of tools that benefit multiple individuals, another claimed for the first time in the newspaper, said Mann.

However, the authors of the study say that Allokelping can be the “first case of non -human animals that manipulate a tool with the core of their body instead of an appendix.”

Michael Weiss, director of Research at the Center for Whale Research and the main author of the study, said it seemed to be the last example of socially learned behavior among animals that could be considered “culture.”

But the number of southern resident orcs has decreased to only 73, which means that we could soon lose this unique cultural tradition, he warned.

“If they disappear, we will never recover anything like that,” he said.

Whales eat mainly Chinook salmon, whose numbers have collapsed due to overweight, climate change, habitat destruction and other forms of human interference.

Ocas and salmon are not alone: ​​seaweed forests have also devastated as ocean temperatures increase.

Unless something changes, the perspective for the murderous whales of the southern resident is “very gloomy,” Weiss warned.

Earlier this year, an unusual show with an orcs Hunting a bird Near the shore.

Killer whales have reached the headlines for other reasons in recent years. Navigators in Europe have reported several cases of orcs bewitching in his glasses In a pattern that baffled many marine experts. The sailors said they turned to everything, from throwing sand into the water to activating fireworks to Thrash explosion metal music in efforts to avoid invading predators.

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