In 1820, an 80-ton sperm whale rammed into and capsized the Essex, an American whaling vessel. The nightmarish tale reportedly inspired Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, Moby-Dick. And two centuries after the Essex met its whale-induced demise, researchers have now confirmed headbutting is actually a thing for sperm whales.
The paper on the findings, published yesterday in Marine Mammal Science, is the first systematic documentation of headbutting activity in sperm whales. Scientists had hypothesized about this behavior before, with a good amount of anecdotal evidence on whales pushing and striking objects with their heads. Researchers, led by Alec Burslem of the University of Hawaii, now confirm that young whales do headbutt each other—for whatever reason—but the team will need more data to draw any conclusions.
A bird’s-eye investigation
The new study presents three drone-based observations of “headbutting and head-first contact” between young sperm whales living near the Azores and Balearic archipelagos, located west of Portugal. The drone footage, collected between 2020 and 2022, was then subjected to qualitative analysis.
During assessment, the team noted each whale’s physical features, like size and sex, and evaluated whether certain contact behavior constituted headbutting. The whales were also tagged with audio trackers for a separate project, so the team also had data to determine whether the whales communicated among themselves before and after the headbutting.
Examining rough play
The recordings resulted in some fascinating insights. First—and most fascinatingly—headbutting appears to be a recurring behavior, at least for the sperm whales living in this area.
Second, headbutting doesn’t seem like something large adult males do to assert dominance, which had been hypothesized in the past, according to a statement. Instead, the headbutting whales were mostly younger.
The audio tags indicated the whales were exchanging rapid clicks and codas that “suggest a background of social interaction,” with each bump varying from “mild to considerable” in strength, the paper noted.
The whales are here for a good time
As is typically the case with animal behavior studies, the team has yet to determine the exact reason behind whale headbutting. Although these particular observations refute the idea that headbutting is limited to adult males, it’s still possible that this “rough play between immature animals” is a sort of rehearsal for similar actions between competing adults, according to the study.
That said, we simply don’t have enough data. But the team believes the latest results demonstrate the potential of drone footage in capturing elusive animal behavior without disturbing nature too much. Oh, and Burslem isn’t just talking about footage from scientists’ drones.
“If there are people out there with similar footage, we would be very keen to hear from them,” he said in the statement. “It’s exciting to think about what as-yet unseen behaviors we may soon uncover, as well as how more headbutting observations may help us to shed light on the functions the behavior may serve.”
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