Facts
This is the place to be if you are looking for some fun facts to share with your friends about the unique long-finned pilot whale. This page is full of random facts that are fun and informative!
The long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas), happen to be a very social species. They hunt in groups and only split during a kill, but only for a few moments. The natives of the Faroe islands have a phrase about the whales saying, “the whales return to the blood”. This means that after a kill when the ocean is filled with blood, the whales all rejoin together, rather than head to the safety of the open ocean (Amos et al. 1993).
Pilot whales are actually part of the dolphin family and are actually quite large creatures. The only whale larger within this family is the killer whale (American Cetacean Society 2002)!
The pilot whale can be trained within human captivity and has shown intelligence capabilities equivalent to a bottle-nosed dolphin! Navy scientists actually trained a pilot whale to recover sound-attached objects with a clamping retrieving device in its mouth from depths of the ocean at over 1,600 feet (American Cetacean Society 2002)!
Early hunters of the species noticed that the pilot whale’s head resembled a black cooking pot, and therefore the species adopted the nickname, “pothead whale” (ARKIVE 2003).
The long-finned pilot whales are still threatened today by hunting in the Faroe Islands (NOAA 2012).
The long-finned pilot whale eats about 70 pounds of squid, octopus, herring, and other small fish daily (Bio Expedition 2009).
Within groups, the pilot whales have been observed to swim in a circle around their prey, while producing a high pitched whistle. This act has been thought to mesmerize their prey, making them easier to be consumed (Bio Expedition 2009).