Animal of the week|Killer whales put salmon on their heads in the 80s. Now they’re doing it again.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
In Canada, killer whales have started lifting dead salmon over their heads.
The phenomenon was last seen in 1987 in Puget Sound, between Vancouver and Seattle.
The researchers are now watching to see if this habit spreads again among killer whales.
The 1980s is starting to come back into fashion. Echoes of Kasari can be found in TV series and music, when middle-aged people yearn for the golden decade.
The currents of 40 years ago have surfaced in surprising circles. In Canada, killer whales have started to lift dead salmon on their heads as a kind of hats. The last time such fashion spread among killer whales was in 1987.
At that time, a female individual decided to put a salmon on her head for an unknown reason. Soon others did the same, and the habit caught on throughout the wider whale community in Puget Sound, Canada, like a fashion fad in humans. It lasted a year until it faded completely.
The Puget Sound is located between Vancouver and Seattle on the Pacific coast. There lives a community of 72 killer whales, divided into their own families. All whales are named.
Now in October, a male named J27 Blackberry appeared to photographers carrying a dead salmon on his head, just like back in the day.
Thirty-year-old Blackberry is too young to remember the wild salmon summer of 1987, but maybe an older whale has drifted into nostalgia and taught the youth some ways. However, there are still no further observations.
Killer whales are playful and intelligent. Their families develop their own language and culture, and similar fads have been seen several times.
A habit therefore spreads easily among whales. It is still not known what this 1980s salmon hat thing really was.
Maybe it has to do with food availability. The year 1987 was a good salmon summer, and there has been more food than usual this year as well.
Maybe the whales are eager to play with salmon if their stomachs are already full. Or maybe they carry fish as traveling fins and it’s just easier to hold a salmon on the head than, say, under the fin under the arm. It has not been seen whether the killer whale eats the salmon later or just plays with it.
Maybe the fish just feels good in the head. We don’t know. In any case, researchers are now watching with interest to see if a bigger phenomenon of salmon hats will develop again.