Researchers are making new decisions on the survival mechanisms of sperm whales

A Canadian researcher says new findings into whale sperm escape devices give us an insight into why marine mammals have not become extinct.

Hal Whitehead, a professor of biology at Dalhousie University, worked with colleagues from the United States and the United Kingdom. They examined the day books of North Sea whales, concluding that sperm whales made wise use of their amazing resource: the largest brain on earth.

The peer-reviewed research paper was published this week, in the Royal Society’s journal of research.

“We have a real habit of disregarding what other animals can do,” said Whitehead, a sperm whale surveyor who lives off the south coast of Nova Scotia, near Halifax.

Traditionally, the orca was the only predator of sperm whales. Staying safe meant creating protective circles and breaking off the tails.

However, this invention left them open to slaughter when whales began to be hunted in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Whitehead says the new findings reinforce a theory that the whales changed by leaving their shapes and swimming upside down to escape the whales, which was also under the power of the wind.

“So the whales saw a sperm and went after it. But they managed to kill him about 60 percent in three or five years. “

Whitehead says the whales can communicate over long distances, using sonar clicks, with each family group using a different dialect.

He says that it is possible that they warned each other in the same way that they share information about where to get food.

“And they used this information to, at least some of the time, more and more often as time went on, behave in a way that avoided the whales.”

The decisions could raise hopes for an endangered Atlantic whale. Their numbers are declining, as a result of ship strikes and tackle on fishing gear, in Atlantic Canada.

“That gives us some hope that they can learn effective ways to avoid noise, fishing gear, plastics.”

Whitehead suggests that creatures that lived millions of years before humans should not be disregarded.