Humpback Whales Give Birth During Epic Migrations and Continue Traveling: Study

Scientists once believed that humpback whales only gave birth in the warmth and safety of specific breeding grounds in tropical waters, where they spent half the year.

However, new research has revealed that humpbacks around Tasmania and New Zealand can birth calves much further south than expected, and can do so during their epic migrations.

“Historically the ‘feeding/breeding’ paradigm has dominated humpback whale ecology, where feeding and reproduction are spatially and temporally separated, with summer ‘feeding grounds’ and winter ‘breeding grounds’ restricted to habitats at the latitudinal extremes of their range,” the authors of the findings wrote. “In this paradigm, the summer and winter habitats are connected by a ‘migration corridor’ considered only to be a thoroughfare… However, humpback whales have been shown to feed in this migration corridor along with performing other important behaviors, such as resting, maintenance of skin health, and song sharing.”

One or two? How many can you see?