Ready for a big fish to blow your mind? Okay, maybe “big fish” is a bit reductive…
It’s a Beluga whale in today’s video!
And the whale shows off some serious brains!
The video starts off innocently enough, with two men sitting on a dock as
they have a beautiful moment with a curious Beluga!
The Beluga is interacting with these two humans, having come in fairly close to the shore! It’s swimming around the bay but it has clearly taken an interest in these two guys and has even breached the surface of the water!
The whale is even letting the two men touch and pet it!
Except, of course, one of the two men is doing what humans do best and
he is filming the action on his smart phone!
Unfortunately, if you play silly games you win silly prizes. The camera man is about to learn this lesson the hard way. So as this guy should have figured, the obvious happens and
he drops his phone in the water.
Plop.
Of course, some laughter from his friends ensues.
You can’t have misfortune without your friends grilling you about it!
It’s a rite of passage almost. It’s the best way to start healing, too! Once you laugh you don’t feel quite so bad about it anymore.
After dropping the phone, all of the humans gave up and accepted their losses pretty much instantly.
The Beluga whale had a slightly different idea.
As the camera man is mourning the loss of his phone and having a good laugh, the Beluga is swimming around the bay,
when the whale seems to take notice of the phone!
Whether it noticed the phone, the people, or the whole situation is unclear, but it understands enough. Tiny box in water zone, human no go water zone. Water zone scary for human!
Now this is far from the first time a Beluga has interacted with people in a friendly, intelligent manner.
No, Belugas are actually really smart as it turns out!
There’s evidence to suggest they have given “names” that they understand and respond to (huge for animals to come up with this on their own.) and complex societies in the deep blue!
Dr. Greg O’Corry-Crowe lead a study on Belugas and their social groupings, regarding which he said:
“Beluga whales exhibit a wide range of grouping patterns from small groups of two to 10 individuals to large herds of 2,000 or more, from apparently single sex and age-class pods to mixed-age and sex groupings, and from brief associations to multi-year affiliations. This variation suggests a fission-fusion society where group composition and size are context-specific, but it may also reflect a more rigid multi-level society comprised of stable social units that regularly coalesce and separate.
“The role kinship plays in these groupings has been largely unknown.”
It’s a markedly significant difference from the (educated and fair) assumption that Belugas were like Killer Whales or even elephants and other fairly intelligent species that gather in groups that are together because they’re blood relatives.
So with this intelligence and complexity in mind, it should come as no surprise that
the Beluga then tries to save this guy’s phone from Davy Jones’ Locker!
Pretty quick way to earn a friend, right? It’s crazy that the Beluga was able to recognise so much of the problem from beneath the surface of the water!
The whole interaction is actually just super mind blowing and impressive all around! I had no idea that Belugas were so smart or handy!
Honestly, the video is a quick watch and it’s really worth seeing! You can check it out just below!
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