Spindle Neurons
Guests on Wednesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise got to see a lot of dorsal fins, and a lot of Humpback flukes from various adult whales who were just cruising around the area at a relaxed pace. We also spent some quality time with 2 different Mom/Calf pods — these whales were relaxing too.
On Thursday’s Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise we spent most of our trip with a Mom/Calf/Escort trio. These three whales were in very shallow water (40 – 60′) and were resting just outside the channel markers at Kawaihae Harbor. All 3 of them must have found us interesting as they chose to surface pretty close to our idling boat. At the very end of the cruise, 2 BIG adult Humpbacks breached simultaneously, but only a couple of us saw them. When we deployed our hydrophone during this cruise, we heard a lot of different whale voices, and based on the volume, at least 4 of those whales were singing within a mile or so of us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Are the Humpbacks we watch so closely each winter watching us too? Researchers have discovered that the brains of many cetaceans, including Humpbacks, contain 3 times as many spindle neurons (see the image above) as are found in humans. What do these neurons do? In human brains, spindle neurons have been observed to be active when the subject is experiencing strong emotions and social awareness…so it’s quite possible that the whales who approach our boats are doing so with intent. Maybe just as we spend our days trying to interpret the reasons behind the whales’ behaviors, the Humpbacks are spending their days trying to figure out why we’re so interested in them!