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Northwest Pacific orcas have start up wearing salmon hats again , bringing back a freakish style first described in the eighties , research worker say .
Last month , scientists and whale watcher spottedorcas(Orcinus Orcinus orca ) in South Puget Sound and off Point No Point in Washington Stateswimming with dead Pisces the Fishes on their head .
This is the first time they ’ve donned the bizarre headgear since the summertime of 1987 , when a trendsetting female West Coast orca kickstarted the conduct for no apparent reason . Within a couple of calendar week , the rest of the pod had jump off on the bandwagon and turned Salmon River army corps into must - have fashion accessories , according to themarine preservation charity grampus — but it ’s ill-defined whether the same will go on this time around .
Researchers think the orcas sporting Salmon River hats now may be veterans of the trend when it first come out well-nigh 40 years ago . " It does seem possible that some individual that experienced [ the behaviour ] the first time around may have start it again,“Andrew Foote , an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway , toldNew Scientist .
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The motivation for the salmon hat trend remain a mystery . " Honestly , your speculation is as in effect as mine,“Deborah Giles , an killer whale researcher at the University of Washington who also head the scientific discipline and research teams at the non - profit Wild Orca , secern New Scientist .
Salmon hats are a arrant object lesson of what researcher call a " fad " — a behavior initiated by one or two individuals and temporarily pick up by others before it ’s forsake . Back in the 1980s , the drift only lasted a year ; by the summer of 1988 , numb fish were totally passé and salmon hats vanish from the West Coast killer population .
Orca researchers ' adept speculation is that salmon lid fads are linked to high food availability . South Puget Sound is currently teeming with chum Salmon River ( Oncorhynchus keta ) , and with too much solid food to eat on the spotlight , orcas may be saving fish for later by equilibrate them on their heads , New Scientist report .
Orcas have been spotted hive up nutrient aside in other place , too . " We ’ve seen mammal - eat killer whales bear large chunks of food under their pectoral fin , kind of insert in next to their dead body , " Giles suppose . Salmon is probably too low to fit firmly under orcas ' pectoral fins , so the maritime mammals may have opted for the top of their head instead .
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Camera - equipped drones could help oneself researchers supervise Salmon River lid - wearing orcas in a way of life that was not potential 37 years ago . " Over clock time , we may be able to gather enough entropy to show that , for example , one carry a fish for 30 minutes or so , and then he ate it , " Giles tell .
But the food availability theory could be faulty — if the footage reveals that orcas abandon the salmon without eating them , research worker will be sent back to the drawing circuit board .
Whatever the reason for the behavior , Giles said it ’s been fun to look out it come back in style . " It ’s been a while since I ’ve personally seen it , " she said .
