In trap-feeding, whales lie on the floor of the water with their mouths open. This permits shelter-seeking prey species equivalent to herring and krill – which don’t understand a stationary object as a risk – to shoal into their open mouths.
The whale then heaves its mouth closed, trapping a whole lot of prey in a single gulp. This behaviour has been noticed within the Gulf of Thailand in Bryde’s or Eden’s whales, and in Canada in humpback whales.
But it seems parallels to this behaviour have been additionally documented in medieval literature, as we describe in a brand new paper revealed right now in Marine Mammal Science.
There are putting parallels between trap-feeding and the searching technique of a monstrous sea creature referred to as the “hafgufa”, described in medieval Scandinavian manuscripts.
The mid-Thirteenth-century Old Norse textual content Konungs Skuggsjá (the King’s Mirror) says of this creature:
‘when it goes to feed, it offers a terrific belch out of its throat, together with which comes a substantial amount of meals. All kinds of close by fish collect, each small and huge, looking for there to accumulate meals and good sustenance. But the massive fish retains its mouth open for a time, no kind of extensive than a big sound or fjord, and unknowing and unheeding, the fish rush in of their numbers. And when its stomach and mouth are full, [the hafgufa] closes its mouth, thus catching and hiding inside it all of the prey that had come looking for meals’ (M. Firth, Trans.).
Although this textual content exaggerates the creature’s measurement, the opposite particulars match trap-feeding surprisingly intently. Even the hafgufa’s belch might correspond to stories of rorqual whales expelling a surplus slurry of water and meals particles as they filter and swallow their prey.
Interestingly, the creature is just not described as a fantastical monster, however as a fish, a time period usually used interchangeably with whales in medieval sources.
If these medieval Scandinavian texts actually are describing trap-feeding, it demonstrates the method is far older than beforehand thought. So, we examined different pre-modern descriptions of sea creatures in search of parallels.
Many of the texts had been tailored or translated straight from earlier texts, so it was unimaginable to know if the neighborhood which produced them had first-hand expertise of trap-feeding. However, in some texts new correct particulars had been added, suggesting an eye-witness connection.
The earliest of those, an historic work on pure historical past referred to as the Physiologus, was compiled in Egypt and dates again practically two millennia.
How did we not discover this earlier than?
But if trap-feeding was first recorded 2,000 years in the past, why has it not been reported in trendy instances till 2011?
One attainable rationalization is that the devastating impact of historic whaling has triggered whale numbers to stay a lot decrease than they have been in medieval and historic instances. North Atlantic humpback numbers are estimated to be solely a fifth of their pre-industrial whaling ranges.
Trap-feeding could also be a response to larger inhabitants density. Just this month, new analysis on Australian humpbacks confirmed that whalesongs have gotten much less frequent as populations get better from whaling and competitors for mating turns into extra intense.
The rise in whaling within the Seventeenth and 18th centuries was accompanied by developments in know-how and a corresponding prejudice towards medieval society, which was more and more seen as backwards, unscientific, and superstitious.
Mysterious creatures of the deep
However, probably the most fantastical descriptions of the hafgufa are literally from Seventeenth- and 18th-century writers, who conflated the creature with all types of different sea monsters, such because the kraken, leading to a normal confusion concerning the nature of this creature in trendy instances. One notable current depiction of the hafgufa within the standard PlayStation sport God of War Ragnarök even depicts it as a large jellyfish!
In conducting our analysis, we spoke to marine biologists who assumed it could merely be unimaginable to find out how lengthy whales had been trap-feeding.
So, this multidisciplinary analysis offers proof from an sudden quarter, and should spotlight new avenues for researching our marine previous.
It additionally exhibits that though medieval and historic individuals didn’t have trendy scientific frameworks to interpret the pure world, their observations can comprise distinctive proof of pure phenomena and could also be extra correct than we realise.
Source: www.9news.com.au
