If you are prone to fits of giggling at words firmly rooted in serious scientific study but, when removed from that astute context, have quite graphic sexual connotations, then you’d better strap in because I’m about to blow your mind. According to research published in Animal Behavior and Cognition and reported by IFLScience, humpback whales are engaging in a rare behavior known as—are you ready for it?—“gaping.”
It’s when the whales opened their gigantic mouths big and wide, even when there’s nothing around to eat. Researchers have no idea why the whales were gaping, but they do know they would not have known this was even happening if not for whale-watching tourists armed with smartphones.
Usually, if a humpback whale opens its massive jaw, it’s to eat, as it lunges through swarms of krill or small fish, filtering out the water through baleen plates. Yet, they’ve been filmed a number of times still opening their mouths as wide as they can for seemingly no reason, mostly during migration, and often when they are thousands of kilometers from their feeding grounds.
Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out Why Humpback Whales Are ‘Gaping’
Whale watchers and even swimmers have captured these moments dozens of times on video, with the researchers identifying 66 usable cases so far, giving them a sizable dataset they couldn’t have built on their own.
People love filming gaping humpbacks.
While the research team isn’t exactly sure why they’re doing this, their leading theory leans toward some kind of social display. Gaping is often observed when other whales are nearby, suggesting it may be a form of communication. The underwater footage they reviewed even shows whales snapping their mouths shut, which they think might be producing a sound that provides other whales with vital information.
Another theory suggests that the whales might just be exercising their job muscles to keep the tool they use to catch food nice and limber, since they barely have to use it during long migrations.
One thing the researchers aren’t sure of is whether the behavior is new. After humpback whale populations were on the brink, they rebounded alongside the rise of whale tourism and the widespread dissemination of cameras of all kinds. They may have been doing this forever; they just didn’t have an audience to witness it, or, rather, we just didn’t have the tools necessary to see it.
Either way, now that we can see it, we set the figure out what it means. Luckily, it doesn’t seem like smartphones are going away anytime soon. While that may have its own problems for us humans, like phone addiction and the easy spread of misinformation via these little illuminated bricks we keep in our pockets, it’s helping researchers notice something about humpback whales we never would’ve known otherwise.
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