{"id":355747,"date":"2026-03-24T15:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T15:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/355747\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T15:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T15:38:10","slug":"drones-film-sperm-whales-headbutting-each-other-its-the-first-time-the-behaviour-has-been-caught-on-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/355747\/","title":{"rendered":"Drones film sperm whales headbutting each other. It’s the first time the behaviour has been caught on camera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, if a marine animal hits the news for\u00a0sinking boats<\/a>, chances are the damage was done by an orca<\/a>. But, in the 19th\u00a0century, there was a very different culprit \u2013 an ocean giant with a long, rounded head like a battering ram.<\/p>\n

Many 19th-century whalers shared arresting accounts of\u00a0sperm whales<\/a>\u00a0striking other whales, objects and even ships with their bulbous heads.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most famous tale is that of the whaleship\u00a0Essex<\/a>.\u00a0In November 1820, a sperm whale smashed headlong into the ship and caused it to sink. This extraordinary event inspired the novelist Herman Melville to write\u00a0Moby Dick.<\/p>\n

If you look at a sperm whale\u2019s head, you might notice that its shape is somewhat reminiscent of a battering ram. And when scientists examined the heads of these enormous whales, they concluded that they were built for ramming<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, researchers from the University of St Andrews have filmed sperm whales headbutting each other and described the odd behaviour \u2013 which they saw in the Azores and Balearic Islands \u2013 for the first time. Their paper is now published in\u00a0Marine Mammal Science.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the aerial video, one sperm whale can be seen approaching another before hitting it in the face with its head and pushing it along for a short distance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Drone footage shows one sperm whale headbutting\u00a0another. Credit: Association Tursiops (Asociaci\u00f3n Tursiops)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really exciting to observe this behaviour, which we knew had been hypothesised for such a long time, but not yet documented and described systematically,\u201d says lead author Dr Alec Burslem in a\u00a0press release<\/a>. Burslem, an ecophysiologist at the\u00a0University of Hawaii<\/a>, conducted the research while at\u00a0the\u00a0University of St Andrews<\/a>\u00a0in collaboration with scientists from University of the Azores and the marine research NGO Asociaci\u00f3n Tursiops.<\/p>\n

Scientists had previously thought that large adult males were the ones doing the headbutting but this new paper shows that young whales were the assailants. Now, the researchers want to get to the bottom of why they do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to think about what as-yet unseen behaviours we may soon uncover, as well how more headbutting observations may help us to shed light on the functions the behaviour may serve,\u201d says Burslem.<\/p>\n

Although this is the first scientific description of the behaviour, the research team want to know if other people have also caught sperm whale headbutts on camera. Burslem adds: \u201cIf there are people out there with similar footage, we would be very keen to hear from them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image and video credit: Association Tursiops (Asociaci\u00f3n Tursiops)<\/p>\n

More amazing wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, if a marine animal hits the news for\u00a0sinking boats, chances are the damage was done by an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-355747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}