{"id":2861,"date":"2026-08-21T20:24:56","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T19:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/spectacular-cooperative-hunting-strategy-documented-in-humpback-whales\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T20:24:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T19:24:57","slug":"spectacular-cooperative-hunting-strategy-documented-in-humpback-whales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/spectacular-cooperative-hunting-strategy-documented-in-humpback-whales\/","title":{"rendered":"Spectacular Cooperative Hunting Strategy Documented in Humpback Whales"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Humpback whales, weighing up to 40 tons, are known for swallowing staggering amounts of food on a daily basis. Scientists have recently documented an astonishing nocturnal predation strategy among these cetaceans.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Unity is Strength<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In studying a group of <em>Megaptera novaeangliae<\/em> off the coast of Massachusetts, David Wiley and his colleagues noticed that they emitted a paired vocalization when they were near the seabed and under low-light conditions, suggesting they were coordinating their movements.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">In some flowers, bees must vibrate at the right rhythm to successfully collect pollen<\/span><\/section>\n<p>Intrigued, the team fitted tags with cameras to track their movements and interactions. Analysis of these data revealed a cooperative predation technique, reminiscent of the Velociraptors from <em>Jurassic Park<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>While one individual swam along the sandy bottom to dislodge prey fish buried in the sediments, two other <em>M. novaeangliae<\/em> would spring up and position themselves at 11 o\u2019clock and 1 o\u2019clock, opening their mouths when they were close enough to the scout and eagerly gobbling the fleeing fish.<\/p>\n<p>Altogether, out of 110 documented benthic (bottom-dwelling) hunting episodes, 79 % involved close cooperation within groups of three to four whales, illustrating the highly social nature of these cetaceans and their remarkable cognitive abilities.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">A rare event: a drone films the birth of a humpback whale off Australia<\/span><\/section>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"730\" height=\"730\" src=\"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1787340296_179_Spectacular-Cooperative-Hunting-Strategy-Documented-in-Humpback-Whales.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1013811\"  ><\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>More Food and Less Energy Expended<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>According to the team, adopting such a strategy could be linked to the scarcity of prey, or aimed at maximizing the amount of food swallowed, thereby significantly reducing the energy expended in this activity.<\/p>\n<p>But as Wiley notes, no matter how clever the approach, it also exposes the cetaceans to a risk of entanglement in fishing gear that litter the seafloor, notably pots and gillnets, described as ubiquitous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBetter understanding these unique behaviours will help guide conservation strategies,\u201d conclude the authors of the new study, published in the journal <em>Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology<\/em>.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">In some species, leaves directly absorb water and change our view of plants<\/span><\/section>\n<p>Two years ago, humpback whales joined the very exclusive club of animals using hunting tools, in this case \u201cbubble nets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2191,860,1487,312,789,313,322],"class_list":["post-2861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cooperative","tag-documented","tag-humpback","tag-hunting","tag-spectacular","tag-strategy","tag-whales","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2863,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions\/2863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}