• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Wearing A Salmon On Your Head Is Back In Fashion For Orcas, After A 37-Year Break

November 28, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

As anyone who follows fashion knows, certain trends like indie sleaze and cargo pants can come back around after a long and quite deserved break. Orcas, it seems, are not immune. After a 37-year break, killer whales have once again been spotted wearing dead salmon on their head.

Orcas are intelligent and social animals, known for playful behavior as well as passing on certain cultural traditions. These can be relatively wholesome, but sometimes a little destructive, as the recent trend of “attacking” boat rudders has shown.

Advertisement

“Different populations often have distinct dietary specializations that are maintained by cultural transmission, and these ‘ecotypes’ typically have a variety of persistent behavioral traditions that are related to their divergent foraging,” a report into the recent trend of rudder-breaking behavior explains. “Some populations may also develop unusual and temporary behavioral ‘fads’ and other idiosyncrasies that do not appear to serve any obvious adaptive purpose. Understanding the recent boat interactions by Iberian killer whales may benefit from an examination of such ephemeral traditions in other well-studied killer whale populations.”

One obvious example of these fads is the dead salmon hat trend of 1987. In the Puget Sound area of the northeast Pacific, one female orca from k-pod began carrying a dead salmon around on her nose. Over the next five to six weeks, the behavior spread, and by the end of it, orcas from her own and two other pods were wearing dead salmon hats. 

Then all of a sudden, the fad was over. Bar a few times the following summer – latecomers, like humans just now deciding to wear Uggs – the trend had never been seen again. That is, until it emerged again quite recently.

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

Advertisement

Orcas belonging to “J pod” were spotted in Puget Sound on the northwest coast of the US state of Washington in October.

“Observations indicate they are likely finding plenty of salmon during their stay and may be why they have remained inland so long,” the whale sighting network reports, adding, “check out this photo of J27 Blackberry sporting a salmon hat.”

As yet, we still don’t know why orca perform this behavior. It could be that some of the orca were around during the last salmon hat phase, and are bringing it back while salmon supplies are plentiful. One idea, highlighted by New Scientist, is that they are simply using their head as storage space, saving excess salmon caught during salmon abundance for later consumption. Maybe it’s less of a salmon hat trend, and more a case of using their head as a lunchbox.

Less adorable (well, from the perspective of non-salmon) cultural behaviors seen in killer whales in the Salish Sea include harassing porpoises and sometimes killing them.

Advertisement

“They do not eat the porpoise,” science and research director at Wild Orca, Deborah Giles, told Atlas Obscura, “they just kind of play with them to death.”

Just off the west coast of the USA, juvenile orcas have been seen playing with fishing equipment, moving crab and prawn traps, and wrapping themselves up in lines, perhaps as a game.

“Killer whales do have fads that come and go, and they’re often most prevalent among certain sex and age classes in the population. Then, over time, they tend to disappear,” director of Bay Cetology, Jared Towers, told Discover. “I’m certainly hoping that’s what happens with this behavior. But it’s been going on for a few years now. So, we’re not quite sure what to expect.”

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Vietnam’s capital ramps up testing after extending COVID-19 curbs
  2. Diageo sees boost to margins as bars, restaurants open
  3. Flexible Elbows And Shoulders Helped Apes Not Fall Out Of Trees
  4. Largest Colony Of Night Parrots, One Of The World’s Rarest Birds, Discovered

Source Link: Wearing A Salmon On Your Head Is Back In Fashion For Orcas, After A 37-Year Break

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
  • World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
  • Theoretical Dark Matter Infernos Could Melt The Earth’s Core, Turning It Liquid
  • North America’s Largest Mammal Once Numbered 60 Million – Then Humans Nearly Drove It To Extinction
  • North America’s Largest Ever Land Animal Was A 21-Meter-Long Titan
  • A Two-Headed Fossil, 50/50 Spider, And World-First Butt Drag
  • Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Losing Buckets Of Water Every Second – And It’s Got Cyanide
  • “A Historic Shift”: Renewables Generated More Power Than Coal Globally For First Time
  • The World’s Oldest Known Snake In Captivity Became A Mom At 62 – No Dad Required
  • Biggest Ocean Current On Earth Is Set To Shift, Spelling Huge Changes For Ecosystems
  • Why Are The Continents All Bunched Up On One Side Of The Planet?
  • Why Can’t We Reach Absolute Zero?
  • “We Were Onto Something”: Highest Resolution Radio Arc Shows The Lowest Mass Dark Object Yet
  • How Headsets Made For Cyclists Are Giving Hearing And Hope To Kids With Glue Ear
  • It Was Thought Only One Mammal On Earth Had Iridescent Fur – Turns Out There’s More
  • Knitters, Artists, And Bakers Unite! Creative Hobbies Can Help Your Brain Stay Young
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version