Whale beachings

[Shinova]

We all know that whales and dolphins sometimes for some currently unexplainable reason go ahead and beach themselves on land and eventually die, sometimes in droves. I was just thinking that since all whales and dolphins originated from land, maybe some kind of ancestral instinct or impulse made compelled them to return to their "ancestral homeland" or something like that. Whadyou think?

[Surlethe]

We all know that whales and dolphins sometimes for some currently unexplainable reason go ahead and beach themselves on land and eventually die, sometimes in droves. I was just thinking that since all whales and dolphins originated from land, maybe some kind of ancestral instinct or impulse made compelled them to return to their "ancestral homeland" or something like that. Whadyou think?

I think it is an incredible stretch to say evolutionary impulses make them beach, considering whales have been in the sea for 50 million years. That's like saying humans should have impulses to act like Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, when we've evolved 35 million years past them.

[Civil War Man]

An explanation I've heard in the case of mass beachings is one of the pod gets sick and accidentally beaches itself, and others in the pod end up beaching themselves trying to help it.

Obviously, I'm no biologist, so I can't verify that either way, but it's a bit of speculation I've heard.

[HemlockGrey]

I remember hearing something about a controversial theory that said that beachings were a form of suicide.

[Surlethe]

I remember hearing something about a controversial theory that said that beachings were a form of suicide.

That's an interesting take. What sort of evidence did they present?

[Duckie]

I've always heard it had something to do with imperfections in either Earth's Magnetic Field or some sort of Magnetic Compass type thing that Cetaceans might navigate with. Sort of like migratory birds can.

Unsure where I picked that up, though.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Also, supposedly certain sonar used by the US Navy to communicate can confuse whales or dice up their organs and navigation senses so that they beach themselves. I believe that in certain patrols and war-games using very powerful sonar often correlate wioth numerous beachings of whales whose muscle-mass apparently looks like 'swiss-cheese'.

[Drooling Iguana]

I remember hearing something about a controversial theory that said that beachings were a form of suicide.

If a whale wanted to commit suicide, there are much quicker, easier and less painful ways to do it than beaching. Drowning, for example.

[wolveraptor]

I heard once that the sloped surface of the beach wouldn't reflect the whale's sonar back at them, and so the beasts couldn't tell it was there. A huge species, like a gray whale, wouldn't be able to squirm off shore like, say, an orca.

[Darth Raptor]

Everything I've ever heard and read about whale beachings just said they were the results of lost and disoriented animals. I didn't realize it was such a mystery.

[Ender]

I thought it was because silt absorbs the sound waves (as oppossed to the shore itself, which is compact enough to reflect them) so they think its clear and end up beaching because they have no idea where they are.

[Ender]

Also, supposedly certain sonar used by the US Navy to communicate can confuse whales or dice up their organs and navigation senses so that they beach themselves. I believe that in certain patrols and war-games using very powerful sonar often correlate wioth numerous beachings of whales whose muscle-mass apparently looks like 'swiss-cheese'.

Yeah, what really powerful sonar does is not pretty. basically, think that you are walking along, and all of a sudden a bunch of concussion grenades started going off around you. You ae gonna get hurt, and not have any idea where you are going, but have the instinct to run away.

So you run of a cliff.

Same idea.

[RogueIce]

I remember hearing something about a controversial theory that said that beachings were a form of suicide.

If a whale wanted to commit suicide, there are much quicker, easier and less painful ways to do it than beaching. Drowning, for example.

Maybe it's a cry for help that went wrong?

Hmmm... Emo-whales...

With its shallow waters and shifting sands, Cape Cod has long been a graveyard for both man and whale, especially pilot whales. In this treacherous terrain, the whales' critical echolocation system — those telltale clicks whales depend on for everything from avoiding predators to finding a mate — can easily become confused. Yet even after years of studying these big-brained creatures, scientists admit that's only an informed guess and doesn't explain groundings elsewhere. "I could give you an unlimited number of scenarios," says veteran Smithsonian cetologist James Mead, "and because we know so little about whale biology, any of them is possible."

These possibilities include fatal illnesses, perhaps contracted from eating poisoned fish. Or startled reactions to the cacophony of a ship's engine. Or the sudden appearance of a predator. Some scientists have even linked whale groundings to magnetic anomalies that can play havoc with the internal compasses on which whales seem to depend for navigation. One scenario, however, has been pretty much dismissed in this case: disruption by underwater sonic booms from the powerful new U.S. Navy submarine-hunting sonar that recently inflicted fatal hearing damage on beaked whales in the Bahamas — and prompted an outcry from environmentalists when the Bush Administration allowed these exercises to continue. "Extremely unlikely," says Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Darlene Ketten, an expert on marine-mammal hearing who found hemorrhaging and other signs of trauma in the beaked whales and is now examining tissue from the grounded pilots.

I suppose that's as good a source as any. The site may have an agenda but the article itself is supposedly from Time Magazine. Apparently there are a lot of possibilities but the sonar one was deemed to be "extremely unlikely" (as far as causing a beaching is concerned, though apparently it does fuck them up if I'm reading it right).

[Admiral Valdemar]

There is no single cause, but shipping sonar, natural disturbances in the global magnetic field and hazardous areas of land with tidal issues tend to be the main reasons. That or sick mammals that simply can't navigate and want to die if anything.