Blue Whales Rely on Memory More Than Environmental Cues to Find Prey - Essay Example

Oregon University researched Blue whale's methods of finding prey. The study found out that whales rely on historical productive feeding sites. Initially, scientist thought that blue whales find their prey in real time. In order to conclude, researchers examined records of blue whales migration compared to the availability of krill throughout the year. The research was carried out at California Ecosystems. Tagging data was collected for ten years. Monitoring of daily movements of Blue Whales was conducted on 60 whales. A comparison of data taken from California current ecosystems was compared to data taken from satellite measurements.

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It was found out that Blue whales would find their way to areas which had initially served them with prey. Blue whales would, therefore, rely on their memory in order to perfectly return to their historical hunting sites of the ecosystem. Blue Whales often migrate due to changes in climate which makes them hard for them to adapt. Tracking land animals in order to determine their migration routes basing on the availability of food is common. The same concept is a bit difficult when it comes to marine animals. Briana Abraham, one of the researchers, used an example of wildebeests in the Serengeti who rely on timing to survive. Wildebeest make adjustments to their pace in order to ensure they get seasonally available food. Land animals, therefore, follow a certain path with calculated timing rather than just moving randomly from one point to another.

The research showed that Blue whales also follow the same strategy of following a particular path just like land animals. In order to ensure that they follow the correct path, Blue Whales, therefore, rely on their memory. Blue whale movement decisions, therefore, rely on where and when they expect to find food when they are migrating. Daniel Palacios, who was the chief investigator said that they observed that Blue whales evolution proved that they relied on migration routes and timing. Their prediction would lead the blue whales to areas of high productivity. The blue whales would only make adjustments if there were adjustments to ecosystem conditions. Some events affected the availability of phytoplankton blooms. These events included la Nina, El Nino, and Pacific decadal oscillation. During these events, the whales would, therefore, use their memory and historic timing to ensure that they can find themselves in the Goldilocks zone.

Conclusion

There is a lot to be learned about blue whales. It through the research that we got to learn that blue whales tend to like the west coast of the United States. It is estimated that out of 10,000 whales in the world, 2500 of them spend their time along the west coast of America. There is still a chance for researchers to find out how large animals can navigate the ocean. Research can also be extended in establishing how these animals can find good habitat not ignoring human activities and environmental changes and its effects on such animals. A good and detail understanding of blue whales movements will provide scientists with a clue on how the blue whales will be able to or not to cope to changes in oceans conditions in the future. Some questions arose during the research. What would happen to the blue whales population in cases where extreme weather change would lead to a fall in the amount of food available for the whales, this is contrary to whales' expectation?

References

Oregon State University. (2019, February 26). Migrating blue whales rely on memory more than environmental cues to find prey. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190226112405.htm