Many people worship the heroes in costume films, and they pull out their knives to help each other when they see the road unevenly, but do you know that there is also a "hero" in the animal kingdom, who comes thousands of miles to do chivalry. It is a humpback whale, and one of its hobbies in life is to beat the killer whale, the overlord of the sea. But why did it shoot killer whales?
Humpback whales are a genus of marine mammal baleen whales. "Humpback" is derived from Japanese, is a blind luthier who is good at lute in the Edo period of Japan, and the dorsal fin and dorsal tumor of humpback whales seem to be blind people carrying pipas, hence the name humpback whale.
Humpback whales are large whales with a lifespan of 45 to 100 years, adult males average 13 to 14 meters long, adult females 14 to 15 meters long, and newborn cubs about 3 to 6 meters long.
Adult humpback whales weigh about 25 to 60 tons, and newborn young whales weigh 1 to 2 tons.
Humpback whales are unique in their long pectoral fins, which are about one-third the length of their bodies, and their pectoral fins are the longest of all cetaceans.
The anterior edge of the pectoral fin of humpback whales has a row of knuckle-like protrusions, usually attached to barnacles. These protruding and attached barnacles became powerful weapons for humpback whales.
The humpback whale's knobble head and broad tail fin are also distinguishing traits from other cetaceans. Like human fingerprints, each humpback whale has different tail fin features.
Cetaceans do not have vocal cords, instead, they make sounds through laryngeal-like structures in the throat, the mechanism of which is not well understood. Whales do not need to exhale to make sounds.
Both female and male humpback whales make "whale sounds", but only male humpback whales produce long, loud and complex "whale songs", which are also famous for "whale songs".
Each "whale song" consists of several low-range sounds with varying amplitudes and frequencies, usually lasting 10 to 20 minutes. Each humpback whale can sing continuously for more than 24 hours.
Humpback whales in each population only sing the same song, i.e. all North Atlantic humpback whale colonies and North Pacific humpback whale colonies sing different songs. The songs of each population slowly change over several years without repeating.
These songs spread "laterally" between adjacent populations during the breeding season.
At present, scientists are unclear about the purpose of humpback whales' singing, which may be to attract females and challenge other people of the same sex, or to perform echolocation, which makes different sounds during the feeding season and introduces schools of fish into their bubble nets.
Humpback whales prey only on krill and small fish such as salmon, herring, capelin and American sand toothfish, Atlantic mackerel, pollock, haddock and Atlantic herring.
The feeding method of humpback whales is also very wonderful, there are three main feeding methods.
The first is the sprint eating method, the jaw is opened wide, sideways or leaning towards the shrimp, and then the mouth is closed, the folds under the lower jaw are opened, a large amount of water and shrimp are swallowed, and then the water is discharged to swallow the shrimp.
The second method is the rush feeding method, which flicks the tail forward to drive the shrimp into the open mouth, which is also only used when the shrimp is dense.
The third method is to swim from a depth of about 15 meters, do a spiral posture, and spit out many bubbles of different sizes, so that all the bubbles rise to the surface of the water at the same time, forming a cylindrical or tubular bubble network.
Like a spider web woven by a huge spider in the sea, it tightly encloses its prey and forces it to the middle of the net, and it opens its mouth in the bubble circle and "kills it all".
Tens of millions of years ago, ancient lizard whales evolved into two factions of baleen whales and toothed whales, humpback whales are toothless baleen whales, and killer whales are toothed whales with sharp teeth.
In nature, killer whales are very combative, and their brain structure is strikingly similar to that of humans.
Don't look at the relatively petite body of killer whales, but they can round up the giant blue whale in the sea through team battles.
The humpback whale is not an advantage in being larger, but it also has flexible pectoral fins up to 5 meters long and weighing more than 1 ton.
Killer whales alone are enough to choke on one fin of humpback whales, not to mention that many adult humpback whales have hard barnacles on their fins, and the strength is amazing.
Killer whales and sharks are natural predators of humpback whales in nature. They develop strategies to prey on humpback whale cubs or even adult humpback whales, often in groups of aggressive behavior.
Because humpback whale pups swim very poorly, holding their breath underwater for only a few minutes (up to 40 minutes when they are adults), they often need their mother's help to get out of the water to ventilate, so they become killer whales.
Female adult humpback whales are larger than males, with an average body length of 13.7 meters, and can exceed 18 meters in size, and a single tail strike can inflict heavy damage on killer whales.
When killer whales besiege baby humpback whales, the mother will carry the cubs on her back. But killer whales will stir up trouble around their mothers, wash their cubs down, and then drag them to deep water to drown.
At this time, the mother humpback whale can only rely on other humpback whales to help.
For this reason, humpback whales and killer whales are at odds, in order to beat killer whales, they will trek long distances in the ocean to rescue other marine creatures hunted by killer whales, and after rescue, they will fly away without asking for anything in return.
Scientists speculate that humpback whales like to beat killer whales for several reasons:
Revenge: Bullied at an early age, developed a subconscious mind to see killer whales.
Stability maintenance: Humpback whales have a stable breeding area and have the consciousness of maintaining "security and stability" in the area.
Boring: Pure desire to entertain killer whales.
Exercise: Increase combat experience through fighting.
In addition, because killer whales are famous for their love of "big and small" when hunting, it may also be that humpback whales simply think killer whales are too noisy.
