I think everyone has heard of human suicide, but have you heard of whale suicide?
Whales are mammals that travel all over the world's oceans, with small eyes and poor vision, but their hearing is very sensitive and they can feel ultrasound.
Whales can be roughly divided into two categories: baleen whales, with baleen, no teeth, two nostrils; dental cetaceans, with teeth, without baleen, and one nostril. In general, both types of whales live in groups. But what is unexpected is that when the whale commits suicide, it is also a collective suicide!
In 1976, on the beach in Florida, the United States, more than 250 whales suddenly swam into shallow water, and when the tide receded, they were stranded on the beach. The U.S. Coast Guard led hundreds of volunteer whale rescuers to do everything they could to rescue the desperate whales, but in the end they were unable to save the tragedy.
Not only in foreign countries, but also in our country, similar incidents have occurred. In 2005 and 2008, three whales ran aground and died in Guangdong, Hainan and Qingdao.
Those poor whales should know that once stranded in a shallow shoal near the shore, it is extremely dangerous for them. But why do they swim there? Is it really because of "seeing through the red dust" and seeking a way to die?
We know that although the whale is "old and dizzy", it has an innate ability to highly sensitive echo ranging. Whales emit an extremely wide range of ultrasounds, which reflect back when they encounter obstacles and form echoes. Based on the time of the ultrasound round trip, the whale can accurately determine its distance from the obstacle, and the error is generally very small.
Therefore, some people speculate that when whales swim near the sea in order to chase fish, they emit ultrasonic waves towards the beach with a large slope, and the echo error becomes very large, and even the echo is not received at all. Therefore, they will think that there is a smooth road ahead and continue to move forward, which will lead to the disaster of killing.
This claim is currently accepted by most scientists, as many whale suicides confirm this claim:
In 1975, a group of reckless orcas ran a mass aground on a beach in Florida, USA. Zoologists have found many round insects in the ears of whales. It is likely that they destroyed the whale's echo localization system, making it unable to accurately listen to the echo and "misguided".
In 1986, four whales ran aground on Lanzarote and two others washed up the shoals of a nearby island.
In 1989, 24 sword-kissed whales stormed the shoals off the coast of the Nari Islands. What both events had in common was that there were naval exercises at the time, so biologists believe that underwater explosions, noise from warship engines and sonar caused errors in the whale's "pathfinding system."
In 1997, some 300 whales committed mass suicide off the coast of the Malvinas Islands. After analysis, Argentine scholars believe that the strong activity of sunspots at that time caused anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field, destroying the whale's "navigation system" and making it make a "directional" mistake.
After dissecting the suicide whales, some scientists found that many of the dead whales emitted ultrasounds were red and swollen and had lost the ability to distinguish directions, which is likely caused by marine pollution.
Although there is some truth to the above statement, there are other speculations and theories about the mystery of whale suicide.
According to a December 2004 report in the American magazine Science, scientists found small holes in the bones of sperm whales stranded to death, which is a phenomenon of bone necrosis. Sperm whales can dive to depths of more than 3200 meters underwater, and if they float up quickly, a large number of bubbles will gush out of their bodies in a short period of time. These bubbles compress nerves, block blood vessels, and cause hypoxia to their muscles, leaving bones necrotic, leaving small holes. This suggests that the death of the sperm whale is likely to be the price it paid for floating too hastily.
There are also views that whales may be stimulated by accidents and flee for their lives, so they have no intention of stranding; some people also think that there is often a leader in the whale swarm, when the "boss" is stranded, the whole group of whales will die like a martyrdom; there is also a popular retro, so the whales also want to return to land to live (I don't know where such a funny statement comes from, don't you even want to die?). It is also said that whales are sick and unable to struggle to breathe on the surface of the water before swimming to the shoals by themselves; it is also said that whales are stranded after the tide is low due to gluttony and food forgetting to return...
There are too many of these reliable and unreliable claims, but none of them are completely convincing.
However, no matter what the truth of whale suicide is, from all the above speculations, it can be seen that the death of those poor big guys is inextricably linked to us humans. Everyone really should act, otherwise the only thing that will be seen in the future will be the remains of countless whales.