About 10 years ago, marine biologists observed how two different whale species in different geographic locations adopted a new feeding strategy. The whales were near the surface of the water and remained motionless with their mouths wide open. Fish swam into their mouths, whales shut their jaws and ate their prey. This phenomenon was called “feeding in the trap”.
The scientists thought the behavior evolved in response to increased pollution, dead zones, algal blooms and other similar environmental issues that forced whaling to move closer to the water’s surface. But this strategy turned out to be not as new as scientists initially thought.
Study co-author John McCarthy believes this whale behavior is very similar to Scandinavian descriptions of the hafguf. A 13th-century text called Konungs skuggsjá describes an enormous sea creature with an unusual diet:
Many of these texts also contain pictures of sea creatures eating fish in a manner reminiscent of “trap-feeding.”
Why have scientists recently begun to observe fishing behavior in whale populations? The authors speculate that these niche hunting strategies may have once existed, but have since become redundant as whale populations have drastically declined as fish competition has declined.
Source: Ferra
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