A killer whale's son sometimes asks his mother to fetch food even when he grows up
Known as a ferocious hunter of the sea, the killer whale's mother was found to continue to care for her son into adulthood. It is believed that the reason killer whale mothers continue to care for their sons is because it is 'cost-effective', despite the impact on future offspring prosperity.
Costly lifetime maternal investment in killer whales: Current Biology
Killer whale moms forgo future offspring for | EurekAlert!
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/978564
Orca males are burnouts who let their moms do all the hunting, surprising study finds | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/orca-males-are-burnouts-who-let-their-moms-do-all-the-hunting-surprising-study-finds
A research team led by Michael Weiss of the University of Exeter, UK, conducted a study of a group of 73 killer whales living in Washington State in the United States and British Columbia in Canada. These pods have been monitored by the US Center for Whale Research since 1976, providing detailed killer whale data.
Weiss et al.'s research team found that not only do killer whale children basically stay with their mothers for the rest of their lives, but male killer whales in particular are strongly tied to their mothers and continue to chase their mothers.
Weiss also noted that while male killer whales continue to eat their mother's food into adulthood, female killer whales typically stop eating their mother's food between the ages of 6 and 10. matter.
'Because male killer whales are significantly larger than females, they require more calories, are less mobile, and may not be able to catch fish,' Weiss said in the study. I think we are being given preferential treatment,” he said.
Mr. Weiss also said, ``If you continue to feed your daughter, there is a possibility that you will be competing for food when your daughter breeds.On the other hand, if your son breeds, the children will feed from another female. It is cost-effective because you can get
However, it is believed that the continued care of an adult son by a mother is costly to the mother in the long run. The research team's analysis revealed a strong negative correlation between mothers' continued care of their adult sons and the probability of females giving birth.
According to Mr. Weiss, having a surviving son reduces the probability that a mother will have a new child that year by about 50% or more. ``By continuing to care for their sons, the mother will have fewer food resources to conceive and be less likely to reproduce further,'' Weiss said.
Still, it is believed that the merit of continuing to care for the son is that if the son succeeds in breeding, the female can inherit the gene to the next generation. The findings of Weiss et al.'s research team are believed to have important implications for the protection of whales, which have low reproductive rates and are in danger of extinction. The study also highlights the importance of animal social systems in determining population growth and decline, and the need to understand and effectively protect social systems in endangered species.
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