"From whales to monkeys, elephants and even fruit flies, researchers say they are starting to understand animal culture just ‘as it disappears before our eyes’".
"At the peak of the whaling industry, in the late 1800s, North Atlantic right whales were slaughtered in their thousands. With each carcass hauled on to the deck, whalers were taking more than just bones and flesh out of the ocean. The slaughtered whales had unique memories of feeding grounds, hunting techniques and communication styles; knowledge acquired over centuries, passed down through the generations, and shared between peers. The critically endangered whale clings on, but much of the species’ cultural knowledge is now extinct.
Whales are among the many animals known to be highly cultural, says Prof Hal Whitehead, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University. “Culture is what individuals learn from each other, so that a bunch of individuals behave in a similar way,” he says.
North Atlantic right whales are no longer found in many of their ancestral feeding grounds. Whitehead suspects this may be because the cultural knowledge of these places was lost when populations were wiped out by whaling. This loss could spell trouble for the species if human activity degrades their remaining feeding grounds, making it hard for the whales to predict where good hunting is. “The more possible feeding grounds they have, the more likely they are to find somewhere they can get the food they need,” he says."
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