Whale Behaviour

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The name Humpback came from its distinctive diving action. After exhaling, the Humpback begins to dive by arching its body and rolling ahead. Despite many old drawings depicting whales spouting water this is not true. The cloud that appears is actually a vapour condensation caused by the exhaling of two lungs the size of a small car, which they can empty and refill in two seconds.

Humpbacks are seldom seen alone being more social than other rorquals and gather in large loose groups for feeding and breeding. Their docile behaviour changes in the mating/birthing season where the gentle bulls can become extremely aggressive toward other bulls to claim their mate.

The Humpback is the most approachable and acrobatic of all the large whales and with the following repartee, can put on quite a show.

Breaching - Propels most of its body out of the water then turns to crash back into the water.

Tail slap - The slapping of flutes on the surface while their body is near vertical.

Sky hop - The whale rises its body straight out of the water so its eyes just clear the water and then slips gently back again.

Body slap - The rear body and flutes are brought out of the water to slap sideways onto the water or another whale.

Head slap - The whale lifts most of its body from the water and then crashes its head back into the water.

Singing - of all the whale species, humpbacks are the most vocal, loudest, eeriest, and most beautifully creative when they sing. Their songs are a long complicated pattern of underwater sequences of tweets, groans or grunts and other sounds. Only male whales 'sing' and probably is an indication of territorial status and/or a mating cry as their singing is only in the warmer waters.

They sing the most complicated love song of all animals yet do not have vocal cords and simply 'push' air through hollow tubes in their bodies. They sing the same love song in a particular area which gradually changes over a period of time. The males remember their song note by note and when they commence singing again during the mating season, their song is the same as the one they last sung at their previous season - some seven months before.

A recording of their song is aboard Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 the space probes travelling through outer space.

Strandings
The finding of a single dead whale lying on a beach is not that unusual and does not mean the whale died there. Part of nature's life cycle includes death and whales are no exception. Most dead whales do not get washed ashore, being consumed by other sea life, but occasionally some are carried to the shore by winds and currents, and is a perfectly natural thing to occur. Multiple strandings of dead whales in one location, from natural death out at sea, is very rare as the actions of wind and current would usually scatter the animals over a large distance.

Multiple strandings of live whales is also very rare, but when they do happen, the tragic sight of seeing these helpless thrashing, screeching whales on a beach provokes the very question why? Scientists and philosophers have as yet been unable to understand what causes this phenomenon but they do know that part of the reason is due to navigational problems and the tight social unity of the pod.

Mass stranding seem to occur mainly with the toothed whales (eg Pilot and Sperm Whales) and not Humpbacks