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Nearly 500 pilot whales stranded in Australia; 380 dead

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16 Comments
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Tuna and kingfish are well known to strand themselves while chasing baitfish along shorelines.

Killer whales intentionally beach themselves to hunt seals, but are powerful enough to return to the water.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

more likely disease that messes with their senses.

2 ( +7 / -5 )

[ Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, new research has proven for the first time. The studies provide a missing link in the puzzle that has connected naval exercises around the world to unusual mass strandings of whales and dolphins.

Beaked whales, the most common casualty of the strandings, were shown to be highly sensitive to sonar. But the research also revealed unexpectedly that blue whales, the largest animals on Earth and whose population has plummeted by 95% in the last century, also abandoned feeding and swam rapidly away from sonar noise.

The strong response observed in the beaked whales occurred at noise levels well below those allowed for US navy exercises. "This result has to be taken into consideration by regulators and those planning naval exercises," said Stacy DeRuiter, at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who led one of the teams. ]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/03/whales-flee-military-sonar-strandings

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Still not understood as to why. Naval ships' sonars, disease, following pod leaders into shallows, I think we've heard all these theories but still no answers...

Peter NeilToday  05:04 pm JST

Maybe they're just tired of swimming all the time.

That might make sense if land mammals occasionally committed mass suicide because they got tired of walking all the time.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Remember the mass beaching of melon-headed whales, numbering 150, in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, in 2015, and another mass beaching of 145 pilot whales in New Zealand in 2018? This kind of mass stranding of cetaceans happens way too often all over the world.

Isn't the cause of it submarine sonars, as moonbloom posts, rather than parasites or epidemics? We really want to know the answer.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Sometimes happens just before an earthquake, too.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Perhaps they are not so intelligent after all.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Marine scientist Vanessa Pirotta said there were a number of potential reasons why whales might become beached, including navigational errors. Sounds Like the Boeing aircraft with navigational errors!

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

it take only one or wo whales to make a fatal mistake and the rest will just follow, how sad when you really think about it.

Social Bond that could even lead to death, just unbelievable, hard to find in humans these days.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Auto-Pilot was not working properly.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Lots of speculation about the reasons for this. One possibility that is often mentioned is military exercises with underwater soundwaves at volumes that messes with the animals normal function.

-3 ( +5 / -8 )

As with the human world, sometimes dumb stuff happens in the animal kingdom too.

-7 ( +1 / -8 )

A protest? lol

Military? It’s a very remote area.

A disease? Stretching the imagination.

As the ‘experts’ have stated, it’s due to a mob mentality.

-7 ( +2 / -9 )

Maybe they're just tired of swimming all the time.

-10 ( +1 / -11 )

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