The longest journey of a humpback whale: Male travels over 8,000 miles to mate

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-11/the-longest-journey-of-a-humpback-whale-male-travels-over-8000-miles-to-mate.html

The longest journey of a humpback whale: Male travels over 8,000 miles to mate

These cetaceans migrate between equatorial waters and the Antarctic to feed, but this male moved from the eastern Pacific to the western Indian Ocean

MIGUEL ÁNGEL CRIADO
DEC 11, 2024 - 12:14 EST

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Humpback whales are among the animals that travel the longest distances. They follow a pattern: they spend their mating and breeding season in the warm waters near the equator, and then travel thousands of miles to the icy seas of the Arctic and the Atlantic or the North Pacific or, in the southern hemisphere, those around Antarctica. There they feed on anchovy fry, herring or sardines or, in the Antarctic Ocean, on krill, a tiny shrimp-like crustacean. However, a group of marine biologists has reported in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science the longest journey made by a specimen of this species that did not follow the pattern. A male sighted in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Colombia, was seen again near Zanzibar, in the Indian Ocean, some time later. There are over 8,000 miles between the two locations, both known mating areas. This migration exceeds by almost 2,500 miles the greatest distance recorded so far by these cetaceans.

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Kalashnikova recalls that the journey in this direction, from west to east, has been demonstrated by whale songs. Humpback whales are among the cetaceans with the most elaborate songs, and they even speak different dialects between different groups. Recent research has shown that the song, specific to each population, “evolves, since each year a new addition is added, which is often a fragment of the song of another population of humpback whales, and after a while the entire population begins to sing this slightly modified song,” explains the biologist. Scientists have verified how this evolution has an eastward direction, “which means that the same fragments are transferred from west to east through the populations; for example, in 2018 a new fragment was sung in Namibia and Mozambique, then, in 2019, that same fragment was detected in western Madagascar, and then in eastern Madagascar and Australia.” A yet-to-be-published paper now compares the songs of whales from Colombia and Zanzibar, precisely the journey of the male that broke the record.

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