Porpoises Seem to Cooperate in Surprisingly Sophisticated Group Hunting
Published:19 Jul.2021 Source:University of Southern Denmark
When sailing along on the seas and you suddenly spot a porpoise's fin in the distance, chances are that you have only encountered a single animal. Porpoises are most often seen alone, but new research now suggests that they also roam in groups -- and even enter into a sophisticated collaboration when hunting.
The research team has recorded almost 44 hours of drone footage from the waters around Funen, corresponding to 159 hunting sequences. In 95 of these, between two and six adult porpoises participated. The researchers expected to see the porpoises hunting alone. And if it turned out that several porpoises were in fact hunting together, the researchers expected that it would be an unstructured hunt without no cooperation whatsoever between the individual animals.