Humpback whales have been shown to hunt cooperatively at the seafloor in the Gulf of Maine.
Whales that would normally spread out while hunting instead move in unison to target a school of smaller fish.
Once targeted by several whales, that school of fish is then attacked by many whales simultaneously.
A recent study has provided direct evidence that humpback whales may collaborate when hunting in the Southern Gulf of Maine.
Researchers attached temporary suction-cup tags to free-swimming whales.
The tags were attached to seven humpback whales feeding along the seafloor.
They allowed researchers to document what the whales saw underwater and track their movements.
Why the whales kept coming together
The researchers tracked 110 hunting events of humpback whales feeding on Northern Sand Lance.
This type of fish can quickly scatter or bury itself into the sandy seafloor.
It appears that the difficulty of catching sand lance helped explain why the researchers observed something over and over again.
In 79% of the recorded hunting events, there were one to three other humpback whales alongside the tagged whale.
When the whales were approaching the seafloor, they tended to converge on one another.
Their rostrums sometimes came within only a few meters of one another.
The researchers noted that these formations seemed to allow the whales to corral the sand lance between them.
The evidence that the whales were coordinating
Later, the researchers were able to observe even more details about how the whales were working together during the hunt.
The researchers were able to identify every whale involved in approximately 80 percent of the hunting events.
When a tagged whale changed course, it was likely that the rest of the whales followed suit.
Instead of separating after changing course, the whales would tend to maintain their relative positions.
When all of the whales could be identified, they occupied the same relative positions approximately 93 percent of the time.
This suggests the whales were not acting randomly but were instead coordinating their movements.
Researchers also noticed something during the final stage of the hunt.
In several of these instances, multiple whales captured prey almost simultaneously, opening their mouths approximately 3.7 seconds apart on average.
Evidence supporting this hypothesis developed in stages.
First, whales approached one another.
Next, they stayed put.
Then they ate prey at nearly simultaneous moments.
Together, this evidence pointed towards cooperative hunting among humpback whales, according to the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
Why this behavior may be unusual for humpback whales
Researchers believe that the collaborative hunting behavior displayed by humpback whales during this study fits this description.
Humpback whales generally do not form stable long-term social relationships.
Rather, they tend to associate temporarily when necessary.
Sand lance may simply be difficult enough to catch that a more coordinated approach provides an advantage when multiple whales are hunting together.
What scientists still don’t know about this behavior
There are still numerous unanswered questions regarding this phenomenon.
Scientists do not know if this type of cooperative hunting is exclusive to humpback whales hunting sand lance in the Gulf of Maine.
Researchers also hope to learn how these hunting groups are organized.
Future studies utilizing drones, video tags, and tagging multiple whales will assist in providing answers to these questions.
For now, researchers have established that humpback whales repeatedly converged on a single patch of seafloor containing their prey.
They remained next to one another and consumed their prey within mere seconds of one another.
APA CITE: Wiley, D.N., Cade, D.E., Friedlaender, A.S. et al. Meet me in the middle: potential collaborative benthic hunting in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 80, 95 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-026-03770-0
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