11/22/2017
A group of marine biologists that used motion-sensing tags to track the movements of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) off the California coast discovered that most have a lateralization bias — in other words, they essentially are right- or left-handed. The study appears in the journal Current Biology.
11/21/2017
Blue whales, the world's largest animals, usually favour their right side when they lunge to catch food — a preference similar to right-handedness in people, researchers said. But on certain occasions, while moving upward in shallow water, these righties will almost always shift to their left to keep a good ...
Even though blue whales don't have hands, or even feet, a new study has shown that most of them are in fact right-handed. This can be seen in the ...
Blue whales are the largest-known mammals to ever exist, but the bulk of their diet is comprised of krill, teeny crustaceans that the whales gulp down ...
(CNN) Here's a real whale of a tale you can use at the Thanksgiving table to impress your in-laws or to fill that silence after Uncle Jack goes too far expressing his political passions: Most blue whales tend to be "right-handed." Then, when your Aunt Mary helpfully points out that whales don't have hands, ...
The latest research finds that blue whales, the planet's biggest living creature, tend to be 'right-handed'. It sounds like a strange thing to say about a creature that doesn't have any opposable digits, but a team of scientists using motion-sensing tags has found that the giant blue whale is typically a ...
11/20/2017
A blue whale swims in the deep waters off Mirissa, Sri Lanka, March 26, ... MIAMI: Blue whales, the world's largest animals, usually favour their right ...
Blue whales don't have hands, so they can't technically be ambidextrous. But just like humans, and lots of other animals, they do have a lateralization bias, or a tendency to favor a particular side. Blue whales tend to be right-biased. Yet unlike most humans, or any other animal, huge blue whales ...
Blue whales are the largest animals in the world, with bodies that can weigh as much as 25 elephants and extend over the length of a basketball court. To support their hulking bodies, the whale use various acrobatic maneuvers to scoop up many individually tiny prey, filtering the water back out through ...
Blue whales are capable of swallowing an incredible half a million calories in a single mouthful. Now, new research has shed light on exactly how they do this - and it appears that being ambidextrous is key. Like many other animals, ranging from primates to insects, blue whales display laterality, ...
Ambidextrous behaviour by “right-handed” blue whales has surprised scientists studying the huge creatures' feeding habits. Like many other animals, blue whales display laterality, or “handedness” – generally a bias towards the right. But a study using video cameras attached to the backs of whales has ...
blue-whale-feeding-400.jpg Aerial photos (above and below) show blue whales lunge feeding near the surface with fully expanded throat pleats. Most blue whales show a right-side preference for rolling behavior during feeding, but they roll to the left side for more acrobatic feeding behaviors targeting ...
Although blue whales mostly spend their lives below the surface, the majority of what we know about them comes from brief glimpses at the surface. ... So “If a whale is coming from below, and it turns to the left, its right eye will point upwards at its prey,” says Friedlaender, whose study was published ...
Eating isn't easy for blue whales. To do so, they must maneuver their giant hulking bodies, which weigh as much as 25 elephants and are about as long as three school buses, to scoop up tiny krill, which they then filter through their mouths and swallow. Studies on whale dining techniques have found ...
Most blue whales are "right-handed," but new research finds they may be acting like lefties under challenging conditions caused by humans.
The whales betray their right-handed tendencies by rolling clockwise when they lunge for swarms of krill. This complicated manoeuvre involves ...
They are the largest animals on Earth, can live to around 90 years old and have a tongue that weighs as much as an elephant. Now scientists have revealed another insight into blue whales: how they roll. A study has found that blue whales have a tendency to roll to one side or the other when lunging for ...
VIDEO: A tag attached to the back of a blue whale recorded these videos (forward and backward facing views) during feeding lunges. As the whale ...
However, even the "right-handed" whales become left-handed when it comes to one move, the scientists discovered. When blue whales rise from the depths to approach a krill patch near the surface, they perform 360-degree barrel rolls at a steep angle and nearly always roll to the left - even those that ...