by Killer whales were caught on video, the seaweed stopped to rub and maintain each other.
People are far from being the only member of the animal kingdom that has mastered tools. Chimpanzees fashion sticks on fish for termites, crowing produce hooked branches to catch maggots and elephants with branches.
The use of tools in the hard -to -stand oceans in the world is less common, but Sea Otters are known to smash open shellfish with rocks, while inkfish can produce mobile homes from coconut shells.
A study published in the magazine Current Biology describes a new example of the use of tools by a critically endangered population by Orcas.
Scientists have been monitoring the south living killer whales in the Salish Sea between Canada’s British Columbia and the US state of Washington for more than 50 years.
Rachel John, a master student at Exeter University in Great Britain, told a press conference that she noticed “something strange” for the first time last year when she looked at drone camera film material.
The researchers went back over the old footage and were surprised that this behavior is widespread, and documented 30 examples over eight days.
A whale would use its teeth to break out a piece of bull bars, which is strong but flexible like a garden hose.
It would then put the seaweed between his body and the body of another whale and they would rub it between them for a few minutes.
The couple forms an “S” form to keep the algae between their bodies as they roll around.
– for funny and clean skin – –
It is already known that whales through seatang are driven in a practice called “Kelping”.
It is believed that they sometimes do this for fun, partly to use the seaweed to scrub your body to remove dead skin.
The international team of researchers called the new behavior “allokelping”, which means another whale kelping.
They found that killer whales with more dead skin tend to perform the activity and were in front of it that it was a small sample size.
The whales also tended to connect with family members or other similar age, which indicates that activity has a social element.
The scientists said it was the first known example of a marine mammal that produces a tool.
Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University, who is not involved in the study, praised the research, but said that some of his claims “went a little too far”.
Targlenose dolphins that use Marine sponges could also be regarded as manufacturing tools, she told AFP.
And it could be argued that other whales that are known to use nets of bubbles or mud flags to hunt, use tool use, which benefits several people, another in the newspaper, said Mann.
– Culture could soon be lost –
Michael Weiss, research director at the Center for Walks Research and the main author of the study, said it was only the latest example of socially learned behavior in animals that could be seen as a “culture”.
But the number of killer whales based in the south has decreased to only 73 years, which means that we could soon lose this unique cultural tradition, he warned.
“When they disappear, we never get anything from it,” he said.
The whales mainly eat chinook salmon, the number of which has dropped due to overfishing, climate change, destruction of the living space and other forms of human disorders.
The orcas and salmon are not alone – underwater control forests were also destroyed when the sea temperatures rise.
If something does not change, the prospects for killer whales based in the south is “very bleak,” warned Weiss.
DL/PHZ
