Minke whales are the smallest kinds of baleen whales.
Researchers just discovered that they can’t survive by hunting using a technique the big baleen whales use, called lunge-feeding.
This study found that there may be a minimum size limit needed in order to be able to use this strategy successfully – which is why blue whales are the largest creatures on Earth.
Lunge feeding whales move quickly towards their prey and take in a huge amount of water. Then, they use their baleen plates (which are like bristles) in their mouth to filter out the prey. This hunting technique is common among the rorqual group of whales, which includes blue, fin, humpback and minke whales.
A bigger body size is better for eating more food. For example, an 80-ton blue whale can gulp down water with 135% of its body weight inside, while a 5-ton minke whale can take in 42% of its own body mass.
A new study showed how 23 Antarctic minke whales hunt in the waters off the West Antarctic Peninsula. Scientists put suction tags on the whales to track them while they searched for Antarctic krill to eat. The results were compared with information from previous studies of humpback and blue whale hunting behavior.
David Cade, who used to be a researcher at the University of Santa Cruz and now is studying at Stanford’s Marine Station, explained that minke whales are very close to their limit when it comes to how much energy they use for food. If a whale were smaller than a minke, then it wouldn’t have enough energy to survive on its own.
Minke whales haven’t been studied as much as the other kinds of baleen whales mainly because it is tougher to locate and attach a tracking device to them.
Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have collected the most amount of data on a particular species that they’ve ever done before. They are now learning more about this species, as well as its role in marine ecosystems. With climate change affecting it, scientists want to know more so they can save the species.
Researchers noticed that minke whales eat a lot – especially at night. That’s because krill, which are the whales’ favourite food, come near the surface at night and stay deeper during the day. Because of this, smaller whales have to take longer deep dives to get food during the day, making it harder for them to find enough food.
During the day, Fin Whales feed at depths similar to Humpbacks and Blue Whales. However, their eating habits aren’t as intense since they’re smaller. At night they eat way more than they do during the day–up to five times more!
At night, minke whales are really good at catching lots of krill. They don’t have to take deep dives and can instead do lots of quick lunges at the surface to get all the krill they need. This way they can collect more than they would normally be able to during the day.
Researchers have studied how baleen whales evolved and why they developed their unique feeding strategy. It is believed that the first lunge-feeding whale was the same size as an Antarctic minke whale which allowed them to grow bigger over time – like blue whales, in just 5 million years. In this time, the ocean changed and created areas full of prey which was perfect for lunge-feeding whales to hunt down efficiently.
Minke whales are found at the smallest end of the scale when it comes to how filter feeding works in sea predators. Researchers said understanding the size limits on both big and small baleen whales helps us understand how this group of animals evolved over time, plus how they’re affected by and affect their marine ecosystems.
Recently, a study was conducted to examine the eating habits of Minke Whales. They found that the whales can only feed on things up to certain sizes. From their research, they concluded that the whales have restrictions on their feeding rates due to certain size limitations.
Cade, Friedlaender and seven other people – Shirel Kahane-Rapport, William Gough, Jeremy Goldbogen at Hopkins Marine Station; K.C. Bierlich and David Johnston at Duke University, Jacob Linsky at UC Santa Cruz, and John Calambokidis at Cascadia Research Collective – wrote a paper together. The National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research funded this work.
