Whale of a Story: Humpback Sets Migration Record
Even for a whale, this rates as an impressive performance.
A female humpback whale swam from Brazil to a whale breeding area near Madagascar, some 9,800 kilometers, about 400 kilometers longer than the previous record for the species. The finding was published in the journal Biology Letters1 by Peter Stevick, a biologist at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, and his team.
The researchers remain hard-pressed to put their finger on why the whale set off on such a long journey. Explanations range from a search for food to simply getting lost as it may have been responding to another whale's call. Another mystery: It's the male humpback, not the female, which typically makes the longer treks. The females, by contrast, tend to remain closer to their breeding areas.
The whale's journey goes into the record books as being more than twice the species' typical seasonal migratory distance. It's also the longest documented movement by a mammal."The main take-home message is that the movement patterns of these animals are messier and less constrained than we tend to think," Stevick told Nature News.