Thanks to miniaturized sleep labs, scientists are able to track the extreme ways animals snooze in risky environments.

Offered by University of California, Santa Cruz. In this course each student will create a scientific animation that tells a story with data ... Enroll for free.

Cooperative hunting, in its numerous forms, has implications for animal cognition and social evolution. We used multi-sensor acoustic/video recording tags attached to free-swimming humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) to provide the species’ first documentation of cooperative, coordinated benthic hunting and evidence supporting collaboration, the most cognitively complex level of hunting. Collaborative hunting, consisting of the tagged whale and 1–3 co-hunters, comprised 79% (n = 110) of observed benthic-hunting events. Hunting animals concurrently arrived at the seafloor and simultaneously moved towards co-hunters, forming a head-to-head configuration that terminated when rostrums were within meters of each other; a behavior that could be seen to drive/corral sand lance (Ammodytes dubius) prey towards co-hunter(s). Tagged animals changed their direction of attack for each event, but co-hunters typically realigned into the same relative position, based on that of co-hunters. Using a clock position method, in relation to the tagged animal’s heading (12:00; n = 87), co-hunters occupied the 1:00 position most frequently (59%), followed by 11:00 (35%), 12:00 (12%), 3:00 (5%), and 2:00 (2%). The 1:00 and 11:00 locations would be optimal prey herding/capture positions. In events where all co-hunters were identified, individuals assumed the same position in 93.1% of events (n = 54). Animals opened their mouths for prey capture in near unison (mean offset 3.7 s, SD 5.3 s, n = 43). The fission-fusion, non-kin-based social system of humpback whales makes them an unlikely species to evolve collaborative hunting. We speculate that the need to capture small, evasive prey, combined with cognitively driven behavioral plasticity contribute to the evolution of this hunting strategy.

Our planet is under growing pressure—whether it’s the safety of the food we eat, the quality of the air we breathe or the stability of the systems we rely on—and UC San Diego researchers are stepping ...

Seals directly detect blood oxygen to adjust time underwater

AI2050 fellowships recognize scholars working to create AI for a better world

Scientific Data - Two decades of three-dimensional movement data from adult female northern elephant seals

As warmer winters melt the snow drifts that endangered Saimaa ringed seals raise their young in, humans are giving them a helping hand

Scientific Data - Two decades of three-dimensional movement data from adult female northern elephant seals