Sperm whales taught each other how to avoid harpoons after being hunted for them 200 years ago, according to a new study.
The research, published Wednesday by the Royal Society, is based on newly digitized logs of American whalers, which recorded details of their expeditions in the North Pacific during the 19th century, such as the number of whales spotted or tapped.
Although they were very popular for their whale, ivory, and blubber and nearly 80,000 travel days, there were only 2,405 successful whale watching, just a 3 percent success rate.
The authors of the study, researchers on whales, Professor Hal Whitehead and dr. Luke Rendell, as well as the computer scientist dr. Tim D Smith, also found that the strike rate of whalers has dropped by 58 percent in less than two and a half years. first started hunting in the region.
In Halifax, Canada, Professor Whitehead of Dalhousie University told The Owen Sun Sound Times: “It was very remarkable. I thought there would be a drop, but not so much and not so fast.
“Usually you expect it to increase as they invent things and become more successful. This is usually how we exploit wildlife. We become more efficient when we learn how to do it.”
The study concluded that potfish learned how to kill them, shared this information with their pods and changed their behavior accordingly and showed ‘cultural evolution’.
The species live with their children in pods or groups that are only female, so they can form close links and share tips to evade hunters.
The hunters acknowledged that the potfish had developed tactics to evade them. Instead of forming defensive squares used to ward off their natural predators, the orca, the potfish, understood that they could walk out against the wind through the hunters’ windbreaks.
The advent of steam power and grenade harpoons in the later years of the 19th century meant that even the tinplate whale was doomed to mass slaughter.
“It was cultural evolution, too fast for genetic evolution,” Whitehead says.
Sperm whales have the largest brain of any animal on the planet and the researchers stressed that if they could adapt 200 years ago, they could probably also face the challenges of the ocean today.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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