About 270 pilot whales were discovered stranded in an Australian harbour this week, sparking a major rescue mission.

Pengo Diet and Predators . Pilot whales are cetaceans belonging to the genus Globicephala.The two extant species are the long-finned pilot whale (G. melas) and the short-finned pilot whale (G. macrorhynchus).The two are not readily distinguishable at sea, and analysis of the skulls is the best way to distinguish between the species. Until now, what happened in the depths, where many whales hunt, stayed there.A new study has revealed that pilot whales are “the cheetahs of the deep sea,” making 15-minute, high-speed, all-or-nothing dives up to 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) deep to chase and catch large squid, before surfacing to catch their breath.“They make colossal dives and must come back exhausted,” said Natacha Aguilar de Soto, the study’s lead author. The two are not readily distinguishable at sea, and analysis of the skulls is the best way to distinguish between the species. What are pilot whales catching at 3,000 feet?Pilot whales are known to eat several species of large deep-water squid, some of which get big enough to be worth chasing. (Courtesy of Mark Johnson, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution),In Johnson?s lab at WHOI, he and Aguilar de Soto spend hours analyzing the large files of numerical data collected by the tags on each whale?s dive, including depth and water temperature, the whale?s body orientation and tail strokes, the sounds emitted from and reflected back to the whale, and other sounds in the ocean. “The sprints of these short-finned pilot whales open a new perspective into optimal foraging theories of deep-diving breath-holding mammals,” said Aguilar de Soto.Running is harder than walking, even in air, and water exerts a much higher drag than air. “Pilot whales have a square head that gets in the way of the returning sound.”,“The D-tag was the first instrument to capture an echo from prey in the wild, one of the great challenges in studying echolocation,” said co-author Peter Madsen, a professor at the University of Aarhus inDenmark. (Nick Tregenza),Short-finned pilot whales are small toothed whales found around the world. As top predators, pilot whales also suffer from the bioaccumulation of contaminants such as heavy metals and organichlorines in their tissues, which can have serious long-term impacts on health and reproduction, and is a rising concern in cultures that consume pilot whale meat. Pilot whale range: short-finned pilot whale in blue and long-finned pilot whale in green. (Frants Jensen, Aarhus University, Denmark),A rare photo of a mother pilot whale and her calf, breaking the surface off Tenerife. Perhaps the different species can coexist in the same territory because they have evolved different hunting styles, just as cheetahs have done to carve a niche on the same Serengeti Plains where other big cats hunt, he said.Rather than expending energy in a sprint for a big, one-time payoff as pilot whales do, beaked whales are more like endurance runners. While the Tasmania stranding is one of the biggest recorded in the region, the southern reaches of Australia regularly see mass whale beachings.In 2017, more than 600 of the creatures beached themselves in neighbouring New Zealand, with rescuers managing to save about 400.Both areas are known “hotspots” for whale strandings, with recorded incidents dating back to the 1800s in New Zealand, according to Karen Stockin, an expert in marine mammals at the country’s Massey University.Mass whale strandings also regularly occur in other parts of the world.In April 2015, about 150 melon-headed whales were discovered washed up on a stretch of beach in Japan.

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