publication . Article . 2015

Visual and behavioral evidence indicates active hunting by sperm whales

Tsunemi Kubodera; Ryosuke Okamoto; Masao Amano; Kyoichi Mori; Katsufumi Sato; Kagari Aoki;

Open Access

Published: 16 Mar 2015 Journal: Marine Ecology Progress Series, volume 523, pages 233-241 (issn: 0171-8630, eissn: 1616-1599,

Publisher: Inter-Research Science Center

Summary

Abstract

It is hypothesized that sperm whales employ active pursuit strategies for hunting prey, mainly deep-sea squid at great depths, but no visual evidence has been obtained to confirm this. We recorded the hunting behavior of sperm whales using animal-borne cameras and accelerometers simultaneously deployed on 17 whales, and obtained 42.8 h of diving data, includ- ing 17 715 images. A statistical comparison indicated no clear effect of light (with or without flash- ing white lights from cameras) on diving behavior of tagged whales. Although 98.5% of the still images were of empty water and uninformative, 5 classes of images with visible material were identified: (1) ...

doi: 10.3354/meps11141

Subjects

free text keywords: Predation, Anatomy, Squid, biology.animal, biology, Zoology, Visual evidence, Animal body, Sperm

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