newfangled research has revealed that blue-blooded heavyweight roll onto different side of their consistency depending on how deep they are feeding in the water system column , and what size food piece they happen to be snacking on . This isthe first timethat an animal has been testify to adapt its lateralisation , or laterality , to whatever task they go on to be undertaking at that time .
Many brute exhibit lateralized behaviors , elephant often favor one ivory over the other , for instance . It is think to be good to them as it can help them become more efficient at certain tasks , like when chimpanzees make tools . Some louse , like honeybees , even show a degree of handedness indicating that there must be some benefit to lateralization . It look though , that the blue whale are doing things slightly other than , and show “ setting - dependent ” handedness .
television observations had shown that when blue heavyweight perform their incredible lunge feeding behavior at the surface , in which they can rotate up to 360 degrees so as to catch as much krill in their mouths as possible , they tend to do it by roll to their left , despite many thinking that the animals were likely “ right - handed ” .
Yet after research worker start up tag the animals , using suction cup to attach varan that recorded location , upper , and question data point , they found that things wereby no think that clear - cut . When give in deeper water , it turns out that the cetaceans are nowhere nearly as acrobatic , do 90 - degree side rolls or else . But the weird matter is that down in these depths , they were often rolling to their proper instead .
“ To the in force of our knowledge , this is the first example where animals show unlike lateralize behaviors calculate on the context of the task that is being performed,”explainedJames Herbert - Read , Centennial State - author of the newspaper publisher issue inCurrent Biology .
They suspect that this conflate up of handedness is all related to the distribution of quarry . When the krill accumulate nearer the surface it is in small patches . For an animal as big as the blue whale , for which even just the act of feeding is massively push intensive , they have to ensure when they lunge , they ’re going to get all the nutrient they can . As motor control in vertebrate is processed in the odd side of the genius , the researchers retrieve the hulk vagabond to the left hand so they can keep their right oculus on the food , the info from which is also sue in the left side of the nous .
At depth , however , there is not enough light to see and so the whales but retrovert to rolling to their right instead . This point how such large animals manage to get enough food for thought by adapting their eating behavior to match specific predator - prey interactions .
