MASS SUICIDE OF WHALES
Own Correspondent)
Dashed to Death on Rocks at Capetown SCIENTISTS PUZZLED
(By Air Mail —
CAPETOWN, Feb. 3. Scientists in Capetown are again puzzled by the mass suicide of a school of false killer whales reporfed t'vom Stompneus, on the coast about :00 miles nprth of Table Bay. About 35 whales, males and femaies, with one calt dashed themsejves in frenzy over a jaggjed reef and landed up in the undergrowth above higu.vater mark. The whales wer© terribly cut about by the sharp rocks in their struggleSj and some of them even broke cheir teeth ou the rocks. Only a year ago anather school of false killer whales dashed themselves to death in the same way near the same spot, and the same thing bappened nearer Capetown in 1928. i Nobody can explain the urge that 'iinpels the whales to suicide. Some of the explanations are that the whale* gi mad; that sand churned up in the water irritates them; that they dash Into shallow water in pursuit of fish and then flounder about until exhausted; that they themselves are chased by sharks; and that they are following an ancestral urge. All these suggeetions are mere eon jecture, however. Nobody knows why they do it. ,
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Bibliographic details
Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 35, 25 February 1937, Page 5
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208MASS SUICIDE OF WHALES Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 35, 25 February 1937, Page 5
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