December 5, 2024
2 minimum read
For killer whales, dead salmon hats are back in fashion for the first time in 37 years
Killer whales off the coast of Washington state are balancing dead fish on their heads like they did in the 1980s, but researchers still don’t know why they do it.
Killer whale (killer whale) or killer whales, San Juan Islands. Washington state, USA.
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Orcas in the northwest Pacific have started wearing salmon hats again, researchers say, returning to a strange trend first reported in the 1980s.
Last month, scientists and whale watchers spotted a killer whale (killer whale) Swimming with dead fish on their heads in South Puget Sound and off Point Nor Point in Washington state.
This is the first time they have worn this strange headgear since the summer of 1987. That’s when the West Coast female killer whale that started the trend started doing it for no apparent reason. Within weeks, the rest of the salmon jumped on the bandwagon, turning salmon carcasses into essential fashion accessories, according to marine conservation charity ORCA. However, it is unclear whether the same will happen this time.
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Researchers believe that orcas currently wearing salmon hats may be old-timers from when the trend first emerged about 40 years ago. “It seems possible that some people who experienced it the first time started doing it again,” Andrew Foote, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, told New Scientist.
The motivation for the salmon hat trend remains a mystery. “Honestly, your guess is as good as mine,” Deborah Giles, a killer whale researcher at the University of Washington and head of the scientific research team at the nonprofit organization Wild Orca, told the New York Times. told the scientist.
Salmon hats are a great example of what researchers call a “fad.” It is an action initiated by one or two individuals and temporarily taken up by others before being abandoned. Back in the 1980s, this trend lasted only one year. By the summer of 1988, dead fish had become completely obsolete, and salmon hats had disappeared from the West Coast killer whale population.
Killer whale researchers’ best guess is that the prevalence of salmon hats is related to high food availability. Southern Puget Sound is currently stocked with chum salmon (Oncorhynchus Keta) And with too much food to eat on the spot, the orcas may be balancing the fish on their heads, saving it for later, New Scientist reported.
Killer whales have also been seen hiding food elsewhere. “We have seen mammal-eating killer whales carrying large chunks of food tucked under their pectoral fins and tucked into the sides of their bodies,” Giles said. Salmon are probably too small to fit securely under an orca’s pectoral fin, so the marine mammal may have chosen the top of its head instead.
Drones equipped with cameras could allow researchers to monitor salmon-hatted killer whales in a way that was impossible 37 years ago. “Over time, we might be able to gather enough information to show that someone carried the fish for, say, 30 minutes and then ate it,” Giles said.
However, the food availability theory may be wrong. If the footage shows the killer whales abandoning the salmon without eating it, researchers will be sent back to square one.
Whatever the reason for that action, it’s fun to see it come back in style, Giles said. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen it personally,” she said.
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