Image Credit: IWDG
By Jessica Kittel
Babysitters can be expensive. Luckily, North Atlantic long finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas) have found a solution with built-in babysitters, thanks to their social structure.
New Scientist explains that multiple cetaceans are known to leave their young in the care of other members from their pod. Bottlenose dolphins and orcas (aka killer whales) have both been observed babysitting the calves of other pod members. Belugas and sperm whales have taken it one step further and have even been known to share their precious milk with calves that aren’t their own. All of these species have something very important in common that lends itself to alloparental care (an adult caring for a calf that isn’t his or her own calf). They’re all social butterflies! Or whatever the aquatic equivalent to butterflies is.
Cetaceans (in particular odontocete cetaceans) are known to be very social animals. New Scientist reports that pilot whales are known to live in multigenerational family units that range anywhere from two to four dozen individuals. The individual familial pods will often join forces with other pods to create a mega pod that will stay together for weeks at a time. These large pods lend themselves to safety in numbers and allow the individual whales to travel, feed, rest, and even have a little playtime.
While there have been multiple stories of calves hanging out with members of the group that weren’t Mom, no one had gotten around to conducting a scientific study on this particular aspect of pilot whale behavior.
Joana Augusta, a researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax Canada, decided to see if this was a common behavior among the 3000 or so pilot whales that hangout all summer off Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. Augusta spent years accompanying whale watching boats on their tours where she and her team would take photos and identify the individual whales by physical characteristics. These characteristics ranged from scars to nicks in fins and even pigmentation patterns.
Their data concluded that around one fourth of the calves in the group would occasionally be found with an adult besides their mother.
Using DNA samples, the researchers determined that the majority of the adults that were “babysitting” these calves were actually — plot twist — male. This took Augusta by surprise. And while we can’t know for sure why these males would be the designated babysitters, Augusta believes these males are doing so to show they have potential as a good mate.
These male pilot whales must have read that magazine article about how men that are good with kids are way more attractive than their counterparts.
Work Cited
Augusto, Joana F., Timothy R. Frasier, and Hal Whitehead. “Characterizing alloparental care in the pilot whale (Globicephala melas) population that summers off Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.” Marine Mammal Science (2016).