Dear Colleagues,


I am pleased to announce that the following article has just been published:



Simon, M., Johnson, M. and Madsen, P. T. (2012). Keeping momentum with a 
mouthful of water: behavior and kinematics of humpback whale lunge feeding. J. 
Exp. Biol. 215, 3786-3795



Humpback whales and other rorquals were thought to grind to a near halt after 
each lunge and that reaccelerating their massive bodies from a stationary start 
was believed to make lunge feeding extortionately expensive.

New results from humpback whales tagged with DTAGs (with a high sampling rate 
sensor suite) provided detailed insights to the lunge technique. The tagged 
whales does not come to a near halt. Instead they fluke to accelerate the 
engulfed water. The whales then glide in between lunges at a speed of ~1 m/s 
while filtering prey and repositioning for the next lunge. This suggests that 
lunge feeding may be cheaper than previously thought.





Contact Malene Simon m...@natur.gl<mailto:m...@natur.gl> for a pdf






Malene Simon, PhD
Greenland Climate Research Centre * Greenland Institute of Natural Resources
P.O. box 570 * Kivioq 2 * 3900 Nuuk, Greenland
Phone: +299-361250 * Web: http://www.natur.gl




_______________________________________________
MARMAM mailing list
MARMAM@lists.uvic.ca
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/marmam

Reply via email to