Can you add me? 🙂

Thanks Bettina! Who would have thought that there is such a big overlap between marine mammal scientists and Asterix lovers! 🤓🐳

Thanks Andrew! And nice to meet you today!

Thanks to @cherinebaumgartner.bsky.social for putting all of this together! And to Heleen Middel, @jnschulze.bsky.social, Giulia Bellon and @fipsamarra.bsky.social for the great collaboration and fun we had on this!

So, what is going on? Play? Practice hunting? Caregiving? We did not observe either interaction from start to end, so we can only speculate 🤷 But, as scientists, we love a good puzzle, so we’ll keep investigating! 🕵️‍♀️

The pilot whale calves were seen in echelon position, but also swimming away from the killer whales, and even being lifted out of the water. You can read all about it in our new publication: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Two weeks after the paper came out, we had a puzzling encounter with a group of killer whales that swam with a pilot whale calf 🤯 No other pilot whales were seen. And then, almost exactly a year later we observed another, different group of killer whales again with a pilot whale calf 🤯🤯🤯

In 2022 we published a paper describing interactions between pilot whales and killer whales in Icelandic waters. In all interactions, the pilot whales approached the killer whales and the killer whales avoided the pilot whales, sometimes in high speed chases.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Killer whale vocalisations adhere to Menzerath's law, meaning that longer sequences are composed of shorter elements, but only in their call sequences, not in elements within calls.
➡️ Call sequences may be more relevant level of analysis for communication. 🤓

Haha! It looks amazing! 🤩 Glad you like it and congratulations again Dr. Theresa!

Thanks to @fipsamarra.bsky.social for getting this started and to Rodrigo Martínez Catalan for making the videos!

Find out more on: www.icelandic-orcas.com

Amazing! 🐳 Congratulations! 🥳