Overview
- Marine Mammal Science on Monday published the first confirmed video of sperm whales striking each other with their heads, filmed by drones over the Azores and Balearic Islands between 2020 and 2022.
- The team from the University of St Andrews, the University of the Azores, and Asociación Tursiops analyzed three incidents that mostly involved young, not fully grown whales.
- In one case, a young male hit a smaller female hard enough to move her body, and she left the group right after.
- An acoustic tag on a nearby whale recorded rapid clicks and patterned codas during one clash, a social soundscape that leaves the behavior’s purpose open to study.
- Coverage linked the footage to 19th-century accounts of whales ramming ships, and the authors are asking researchers and the public to share more drone video to gauge how common this is and what it means for group dynamics.