Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that the following article has just been published:

Simon, M., Johnson, M. and Madsen, P. T. (2012). Keeping momentum with a mouthful of water: behavior and kinematics of humpback whale lunge feeding. J. Exp. Biol. 215, 3786-3795

Humpback whales and other rorquals were thought to grind to a near halt after each lunge and that reaccelerating their massive bodies from a stationary start was believed to make lunge feeding extortionately expensive.

New results from humpback whales tagged with DTAGs (with a high sampling rate sensor suite) provided detailed insights to the lunge technique. The tagged whales does not come to a near halt. Instead they fluke to accelerate the engulfed water. The whales then glide in between lunges at a speed of ~1 m/s while filtering prey and repositioning for the next lunge. This suggests that lunge feeding may be cheaper than previously thought.

Contact Malene Simon masi@natur.gl for a pdf

Malene Simon, PhD

Greenland Climate Research Centre • Greenland Institute of Natural Resources

P.O. box 570 • Kivioq 2 • 3900 Nuuk, Greenland

Phone: +299-361250 • Web: http://www.natur.gl