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A male crookback whale bilk at least three oceans in search of sex , a new study show .
The whale ’s journeying is the longest great - circle distance between two sightings ever recorded for the species ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) , scientists aver . Great - traffic circle distance refer to the shortest space between two stage on Earth as measured on the planet ’s spherical surface .
Humpback whales can grow up to around 60 feet (18 meters) long and weigh up to 40 tons (36 metric tons).
get down off the coast of Colombia in the eastern Pacific Ocean and ending off the slide of Zanzibar in the southwest Indian Ocean , the whale ’s odyssey took it 8,106 sea mile ( 13,046 kilometers ) across the globe , the research worker said .
The giant likely swam eastward from Colombia , riding on prevailing currents in the Southern Ocean and potentially visitinghumpback whalepopulations in the Atlantic Ocean , said study co - authorTed Cheeseman , a doctoral scholarly person at Southern Cross University in Australia and manager ofHappywhale , an paradigm database where the investigator pull together evidence for the survey .
" This was a very exciting find , the form of discovery where our first reception was that there must be some error , " Cheeseman told Live Science in an email . Together with the astounding gasoline mileage , one of the most crucial finding from the study was that the whale expend in on several humpback whale population along the way , exploring farther afield than any other humpback whale known to science , Cheeseman said .
The same humpback whale observed in (a) the Gulf of Tribugá, northern Colombian Pacific, on 10 July 2013, photographed by N. Botero-Acosta of Fundación Macuáticos Colombia; (b) Bahía Solano, northern Colombian Pacific, on 13 August 2017, photographed by E. D. Mesa of Madre Agua Colombia; and (c) Zanzibar channel, off Fumba on 22 August 2022, photographed by E. Kalashnikova.
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hunchback hulk usually conform to very consistent migration patterns , moving between alimentation reason in cold waters near the poles and bringing up areas nearer to the Torrid Zone . The whales are known to float more than 5,000 miles ( 8,000 km ) in the Frederick North - S guidance every year , but they do n’t lean to trip far in the east - west direction and in the main do n’t flux with other universe .
The cross - ocean journey observed in the unexampled work shows that humpback whale migrations are more flexible than researchers previously recall . While scientists have now and then recorded similar migration before — such as thecase of a female humpback whalethat swam 6,100 miles ( 9,800 kilometer ) from Brazil to Madagascar between 1999 and 2001 — the male person in the unexampled study has arrange a new space disk while travel from one fosterage area to another .
" We ’ve been able-bodied to document novel demeanor which provides important perceptivity into [ crookback giant ' ] environmental science , " study lead authorEkaterina Kalashnikova , a biologist working with the Tanzania Cetaceans Program and the Barazuto Center for Scientific Studies in Mozambique , differentiate Live Science in an e-mail .
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The discovery is base on exposure the investigator take between 2013 and 2022 , and which they subsequently posted on Happywhale . The pictures showed the same sexually fledged male person in two placement off Colombia , and then five years later on in the Zanzibar Channel , each clip in the company of a competitive group — a group of whales in which a female person is closely guarded by a manful " master escort " and other males vie for access to her , Kalashnikova say .
The motivation for the journeying was likely sexual practice , with the male person in dubiousness increasing his chances of multiply by mingling with member of another breed population . Other reasons for the whale ’s unusual adventure could be to do with environmental shifts that impact the distribution of food;climate change ; and hunchback heavyweight population growth , which boosts competition between males during the feeding and breeding seasons , allot to the study .
The enquiry was published Tuesday ( Dec. 10 ) in the journalRoyal Society Open Science .
