WHALES COMMIT SUICIDE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 113, 29 May 1937, Page 11

WHALES COMMIT SUICIDE

What Is the Reason?

^HE NEWS that hundreds of whales had perished miserably by throwing themselves against the eliffs of the Grotto, near Capetown, sounded unbelievable enough on the telephonej writes L. G. Green. As a joumalist I decided to convince myself personally of what had happenod, and half an hour lafer I was driving north to the place, 50 miles away. The sand and the poola between the cliffs, I found, were red With the blood of about three hundred dead Or dying whales. Some lay motionless in the sun and their heavy breath made a noise like giant bellows, Cireling very low above the caTcases. were birds of prey, eager to begin their feast. I spoke to a man from the neighbourliood who had seen it happen, The whales had emerged from the waves •uddenly, an regular military formation, *.tid begun swimming fapidly toward tha ehore. The impact was so tremendous that numerous whales were killed Instantly, While the others jumped frantically trying to get to the sandy beach. Not one attempted to regain the sea. "With a tremenaous effort, as though driven by a mysterious power, they hurled themselves forward. The man Who saw it was doubtless one of the few to watness the agony of these Whales, described by the naturalists as "sham flesh-eaters." And the phenomenon of their suieide is still very mtieh of a mystery. The news of the catastrophe had attracted. a number of naturalists to the beach- and I was able to intervlew Dr G. W. Rayner, abiologist famous for his works on submarine fauna. Dr. Rayner thinhs that, in spite of its name which would indicate the afftnity of th§ oreature with the selaehians, or cartilaginous fish, it is a real whale, even though a mlniaturc One, but a mammal belonging to th-° great cetacean family. It appears to be related to the dolphin, of which thr Greek writer Oppian wrote in the second century that they left the depths of the sea and threw themselves against the cliffs as soon a° they felt their end approaching, in or der ''to xender their last breath on flrm land." 4 However, Oppian 's statement, wa? disbelieved by the modern seicnti-js who considered it a legend. In 1927 somebody advanced the theory that the variety of whale, which was said to Indulge in the same strange habit, had In the meantime become extinct, but shortly afterwards a school of them became stranded on the coast of Scn*land. Several scaentlsts from. the British Museum then studied the phenomeiion on the spot and were amazed to •fi.nd fhat the cetaceans.in question belonged to a species, the f ossil Temains of which were found during excavatlons in Xiincolnshire. % There ara great differences between the "sham" whale and the ordinaTy whale* The 'former has large cream-

coloured spots above the oyes and on the flanks. But while the grampus or Hller-whale uses its powerful teeth for attacking fellow-creatures of a much , larger size, there seems to be no explanation for the presence of such teeth in the sham killer, which feeds solelj on mollusks. . We still laek a plausible explanation for the phenomenon Of collective suieide, all the more mysterious as it occurs at spots very rcmote from each other, like South Africa, Zanzibar, Tasinania. In 1928 a school of several hundred creatures staged a suieide diama near the Cape. The natives tried to save the smallest of them, pushing them baclc into the sea, but as soon as they could use their flippers again , they returned to shore, rcpeating the manoeuvre several times. They just would not be saved. Examinations of their carcasses reyealed no trace of disease, nor were they fleeing before a storm, as the sea wSs perfectly cairn. Thete ia a theory according ' to which a school always follows its leader, even though the Iatter may have gone insane. " This, however, is disproved since single whales were found dying at considerable d'istanco from the others. Maybe we have to Jook for an explanation in the fact that vast stretches of the Cape Peninsula, iucluding the strip of beach 'where thi? phenomenon . took place, were once submerged. The creatures may have tried to iind a . passage, the existence of which they knew by intuition, .but which in reality had ceased to exist long ago. In support of this theoTy seientists quote the case of eels which travel enormous distances at mating time, the young eels born near the Antilles being led back by instinct to the European rivers whence their parents had set out. We may also quote the case of Columbia River salmon an the same connection. This flsh surmounls the greatest obstacles in its travels, but never manifests similar collective suicidal tendencies. Lemmings, too, those small rodents which tmdertake migrations at long intervals, plunge into the sea and get drowned because they cannot swim, But instinct impels them to return to the element which was theire before a biological whim had turned them into terrestrial mammals, It fs not unlikely tliat in a remote geological past whales, too, were terrestrial mammals. Therefore, df we assume that they kill themselves in a desperate effort to regain -their anceatral habitat, we may be as near the truth as many scientiiic theory. My father nsed to say, "Never suspect people. It is better to be deceived or mistaken, which is only huxnan after all, than to be stuticious, which is common.' ' — Stark Toung.