This summer has been full of orca news stories, from boat-bashing, to interspecies adoption (or kidnapping), to harassing other animals for no obvious reason.
These behaviours may be underpinned by social learning and helping, traits that humans are good at.into boats in the Strait of Gibraltar this summer. Not only did this boat-ramming behaviour make international news, but it also trended on
While social learning often helps animals survive – for example, because they can learn from their groupmates how to find food or build shelter – sometimes, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious function to the behaviour. These behaviours can be thought of as ‘trends’ or ‘fads’. Orca boat-ramming behaviour also seems to be socially learned. We don’t know for sure who started the behaviour, and we don’t know why, but – to date – eleven juveniles and four adults have been seen to participate. Most likely, it’s a form of play behaviour that is ‘trending’ in orca society – they see one another doing it and they jump aboard , and so it spreads through the group.
Epimeletic behaviour may also explain why newborn pilot whales have been spotted with adult orcas. Scientists suggest that the adult orcas may be treating the newborn pilot whales as their own young. Indeed, the newborns have been observed swimming in exactly the same way as newborn orca, in a position that is energetically intensive for the adult but helps to conserve the baby’s energy.
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