Different animals often display different characteristics; and whales are no exception. As such, a man found a whale stuck in the "handstand" pose while paddling a transparent kayak in the ocean.
Humpback Whale Spotted
The humpback whale was spotted by Brodie Moss, an Australian TikTok celebrity, who was suddenly greeted by the whale doing a rare "handstand" pose. This happened while he was paddling when the tail suddenly pierced the ocean right in front of him.
Moss shared the incident in a video where he described how fast his heart was beating as he was greeted by the giant whale, which was a Megaptera Nnovaeangliae, floating while remaining almost completely without motion.
The Australian TikTok celebrity shared how the tail of the whale went up and got stuck there. He then paddled backward in order to create distance but was able to see a baby whale circling the tail. He then placed his camera under the water to try and capture the scene.
The underwater shots revealed how the calf rested its head close to the whale's chest and both of them were seemingly singing to each other. It can be assumed that these whales were maybe related, most likely with the bigger whale being a mother and the smaller whale its child.
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Frozen Whale Tail
These humpback whales are known to live in polar and tropical waters and are divided into many populations. As for its brain makeup, the whale's cerebellum makes up around 20% of its total weight.
Female humpback whales are often larger compared to males. They are also mammals and have the largest blubber thickness for their size, followed by blue whales, which also have huge amounts of rubber.
For decades, scientists have been wondering why they would do such a pose. A pose like that was then given the name "tail sailing," which was occasionally spotted on other whale species like gray whales, bowhead whales, and right whales.
Tail Sailing Incident
Moss didn't reveal where the tail sailing incident took place but he is a known member of the YBS Youngbloods crew. This is a team of people creating ocean media content across Broome and Exmouth.
Previous studies tried to further understand why humpback whales would do such a thing and a study was launched between 1989 to 2000 off the coast of Brazil which occasionally noted tail sailing. The study also revealed that the longest period for this occurrence lasted up to 12 minutes.
Experts in Brazil found that humpback whales would achieve this pose by slowly twisting their tails, and spinning them around until they reached the final position. So far, this behavior was said to happen among single whales and mothers and was even displayed by a pregnant female at one occurrence.
Oftentimes when a mother would do the pose, their calves would mostly swim around them, which is something similar to what was witnessed by Moss.
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