{"id":460822,"date":"2026-03-06T14:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T14:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/460822\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T14:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T14:04:07","slug":"pilot-whales-difficult-birth-may-have-triggered-mass-stranding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/460822\/","title":{"rendered":"Pilot whale&#8217;s difficult birth may have triggered mass stranding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Members of British Divers Marine Life Rescue and other volunteers attempted to save some of the pilot whales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In its report, SMASS said it found that a mature female had experienced a difficult birth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The scientists said this suggested a &#8220;possible social trigger for the stranding&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They added: &#8220;Strong social cohesion may have then led the entire group to follow the distressed individual into shallow waters. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Once stranded, the animals were unable to refloat themselves due to a combination of surf generated by onshore winds and the soft sand substrate on the beach.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Long-finned pilot whales are large dolphins and described by Whale and Dolphin Conservation as having &#8220;incredibly strong bonds&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of British Divers Marine Life Rescue and other volunteers attempted to save some of the pilot whales.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-460822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}