Whales Share Good Ideas, Just Like We Do, Study Says

You might often ask your friends to recommend a good place to eat.  A new study shows that humpback whales do something very similar by sharing techniques for feeding, in other words, a good idea -- just like we do. 

The research follows observations of humpback whales employing a feeding technique previously uncharacteristic of their species. Usually humpbacks will forage for food by blowing bubbles underwater to confuse shoals of fish and herd them together, making it easier to get a bite. 

But after stocks of herring -- a humpback staple food -- hit rock bottom in the 1980s, researchers observed one whale foraging for food in a new manner. Using a technique known as "lobtail feeding" the whale would slap it's tail fin on the water's surface, then make a dive to feed. The technique enabled the whale to prey on a certain type of fish that usually wouldn't get caught up in the usual bubbling technique. 

What happened over following years surprised marine researchers. The feeding technique observed in one whale was seen being replicated by other whales. By 2007 lobtail feeding had caught on for a huge number of humpback whales. 

National Geographic reports that of the 700 humpback individuals known in the Gulf of Maine area, 278 have been observed lobtail feeding, according to a new study published this week in the journal Science. 

"I've been arguing for over a decade now that cultural transmission is important in cetacean societies," said study co-author Luke Rendell, a marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. 

"Our study really shows how vital cultural transmission is in humpback populations.

"Not only do they learn their famous songs from each other, they also learn feeding techniques that allow them to buffer the effects of changing ecology."

The study is controversial, though because it's rooted in observation and not hard experimental data, causing some speculate that whales just picked up the behavior at the same time, rather than communicating it to one another via social learning.