After almost 40 years, macabre fashion has returned

The strange behavior of killer whales was first observed in 1987. This trend was started by one of the females. According to experts from the non-governmental organization ORCA, soon all members of the herd began to wear “hats” made of dead salmon. As it turns out, macabre fashion is back. Last month, scientists and whale watchers spotted orcas swimming with dead fish on their heads in the waters of southern Puget Sound and off the coast of Point No Point in the US state of Washington. Experts do not know whether this trend will spread to the entire herd this time.

Scientists believe the strange behavior was initiated by killer whales wearing salmon “hats” almost 40 years ago.

“We suspect that individuals who had previously exhibited this behavior started doing it again,” Andrew Foote, an ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, told New Scientist.

Wearing salmon hats is a perfect example of what scientists call a fad – a behavior initiated by one or two people and temporarily picked up by others before being abandoned. In the 1980s, this trend in orcas lasted only a year, ending in the summer of 1988.

According to killer whale researchers, this behavior may be related to the high availability of food. According to livescience.com, currently the southern waters of Puget Sound are rich in keets (Oncorhynchus keta)fish from the salmon family. According to experts, marine mammals want to save fish for later, so they keep them on their heads.

Orcas living in other parts of the Pacific behaved quite similarly. – We saw killer whales eating mammals. Some individuals held large pieces of food under their fins as if to hide them, said Deborah Giles, a killer whale researcher at the University of Washington. “Salmon and other salmonids are probably too small to fit safely under their pectoral fins, so marine mammals transport them on their heads,” she added.