Solitary humpback whales manufacture bubble-nets as tools to increase prey intake ...

• Main Authors: Szabo, Andy, Bejder, Lars, Warick, Hunter, Van Aswegen, Martin, Friedlaender, Ari, Goldbogen, Jeremy, Kendall-Bar, Jessica, Leunissen, Eva, Angot, Marie, Gough, William
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2024
• Subjects: tool-use; Innovation; tagging; prey manipulation; energy expenditure; foraging behaviour; FOS: Biological sciences; Megaptera novaeangliae; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m0cfxppbj; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.m0cfxppbj

Several animal species use tools for foraging; however, very few manufacture and/or modify those tools. Humpback whales, which manufacture bubble-net tools while foraging, are among these rare species. Using animal-borne tag and unoccupied aerial system technologies, we examine bubble-nets manufactured by solitary humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in Southeast Alaska while feeding on krill. We demonstrate that the nets consist of internally- tangential rings and suggest that whales actively control the number of rings in a net, net size and depth, and the horizontal spacing between neighbouring bubbles. We argue that whales regulate these net structural elements to increase per-lunge prey intake by, on average, seven-fold. We measured breath rate and swimming and lunge kinematics to show that the resulting increase in prey density does not increase energetic expenditure. Our results provide a novel insight into how bubble-net tools manufactured by solitary foraging humpback whales act to increase ... : # Solitary humpback whales manufacture bubble-nets as tools to increase prey intake [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m0cfxppbj](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m0cfxppbj) These datasets encompass the analyses of CATS (Customized Animal Tracking Solutions) biologging tag and UAS drone data collected on five solitary bubble-netting humpback whales in Southeast Alaska during the summer of 2019. All Data is included with R scripts to process the data in to the formats used to create figures present in this article. ## Description of the data and file structure All .csv files contain the data analyzed directly from processing Matlab files (CATS biologging tag data), image analysis (UAS drone data), or video analysis (CATS biologging tag and UAS drone data). R scripts can be used in any order to import and adjust .csv files into a more user-friendly format for creation of figures or further analysis. Columns in the primary data files: "Data_From_CATS_Bubblenets.csv" (For data from CATS accelerometry tags) and ...