Flinders University John McCarthy
About ten years ago, marine biologists witnessed two species of whales adopting new feeding strategies in different geographical locations. The whale sits on the surface of the water and remains motionless with its mouth wide open. The fish swam into its mouth, and the whale snapped its jaws and swallowed. This is called trap feeding or treadwater feeding. In 2021, a video of a whale feeding a trap also went viral on Instagram.
But this feeding strategy may not be as recent as scientists originally thought. Researchers at Flinders University in Australia have found a striking resemblance to trap feeding in Old Norse descriptions of the behavior of sea creatures called monitor lizards. Hagufa, according to a new paper published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. The creature can be traced back to a type of whale known as bestiality in the Middle Ages. AspidocheloneIt was first mentioned in a 2nd century CE Alexandrian manuscript called physiology.
“The question of how long whales have been using this technology is interesting because it is key to understanding various behavioral and evolutionary issues,” said co-author Erin Sebo, a medievalist at Flinders University. said. Although we were unable to recover this data, we were able to use medieval manuscripts to answer some of their questions.”
Whales deploy a variety of feeding strategies. For example, in lunge feeding, they lunge at a school of fish with their mouths open, whereas whales engaged in bubble net feeding use a circular curtain of foam to concentrate the fish before lunging into the center to feed. Create a. Lobtail feeding was first observed in his 1980s, a novel behavior likely caused by the rapid decline in herring populations due to overfishing. This behavior is culturally transmitted between related groups of whales.
Flinders University John McCarthy
In 2011, trap feeding was first recorded in a group of humpback whales feeding on herring off Vancouver Island. The findings were published in 2018, following another of his 2017 papers reporting similar feeding behavior in Bryde’s whales feeding on anchovies in the Gulf of Thailand. Some researchers speculate that the behavior evolved in response to increased pollution, ‘dead zones’, algae blooms, and similar environmental challenges that brought whale prey closer to the surface, similar to the advent of lobtail feeding. Others thought it might be a particularly energy-efficient means of feeding when fish populations are not very dense.
Co-author John McCarthy, a marine archaeologist at Flinders University, thought the recent trap-feeding behavior was strikingly similar to the Nordic description. Hagufamost notably in a 13th-century text king’s mirror (King’s Shadow Clock)It has been described as a sea creature of large size with unusual feeding methods.
[W]When they go to eat, they emit a large burp from their throats, and a large amount of food comes along with it. Nearby fish of all kinds, large and small, congregate there to feed and get good nutrition. But the big fish keep their mouths open for a while, and with loud sounds and about the same width as the fjord, without knowing or paying attention, the numbers of fish rush in. When your stomach and mouth are full, [the hafgufa] It closes its mouth and traps the prey that comes in search of food.
This is a remarkably accurate description of trap feeding, and key details can be found in early medieval zoologies and the aforementioned literature. physiology: Creatures that emit odors and scents that hold their jaws open and cause small fish to fly into their mouths, and when enough fish have gathered in their traps, the creature snaps their jaws shut and swallows them. “This tradition has remained remarkably coherent for over 1,500 years with minimal embellishment and reinterpretation,” the authors write. Additionally, these early source text creatures are identified as whales rather than mythical sea monsters. Many of those texts also include illustrations showing sea creatures consuming fish in ways reminiscent of trap feeding.
