Scaling of maneuvering performance in baleen whales: larger whales outperform expectations.

ABSTRACT: Despite their enormous size, whales make their living as voracious predators. To catch their much smaller, more maneuverable prey, they have developed several unique locomotor strategies that require high energetic input, high mechanical power output and a surprising degree of agility. To better understand how body size affects maneuverability at the largest scale, we used bio-logging data, aerial photogrammetry and a high-throughput approach to quantify the maneuvering performance of seven species of free-swimming baleen whale. We found that as body size increases, absolute maneuvering performance decreases: larger whales use lower accelerations and perform slower pitch-changes, rolls and turns than smaller species. We also found that baleen whales exhibit positive allometry of maneuverin

SUBMITTER: Segre PS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8976943 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature