Humpback whale's marathon ocean journey sets new record

It’s well understood that humpbacks are migratory animals who make annual trips of up to 8000 kilometres towards the poles to feed in the summer before journeying back to breeding grounds for the winter.

However, they generally follow the same routes each year and return to known haunts, meaning travel so far in an east-west direction is considered extremely rare.

It’s unclear what prompted the whale’s epic new habitat exploration but the researchers speculate it could be in response to environmental changes, shifting food sources or the male testing out new mating strategies.

“This extreme distance movement demonstrates behavioural plasticity, which may play an important role in adaptation strategies to global environmental changes and perhaps be an evolved response to various pressures,” the authors wrote.