According to the BBC, a group of American tourists in a helicopter found many whale carcasses on the beach of Longufjorur in Iceland's Snæfellsnes peninsula.
According to helicopter pilot David, they were flying north on the beach when they suddenly discovered the dead pilot whales. After the plane landed on the beach, David counted and there are about 60 stranded whales.
In fact, the tragic event of whale stranding is not an isolated case. Among the many data records, there are often whales lost in the shallows, either alone or in groups.
About 1,000 whales were stranded in the Chatham Islands, New Zealand's outer islands. More than 150 orcas washed ashore in Fort Pierce, Florida, USA. More than 130 whales were stranded and died in Osfjord Bay, Canada. About 450 whales were stranded near Oakland, North Island.
In the Bay of Bengal, about 40 giant whales were stranded and died on the west coast of North Andaman Island. Just two years ago, more than 400 pilot whales were stranded near the South Island of New Zealand.
According to statistics from the British Museum, there have been more than 10,000 recorded suicide whales in history. According to statistics, there are even 2,000 whales committing suicide every year. So why do whales also "family suicide"?
Some environmentalists believe environmental pollution has driven pilot whale families to suicide. After the whales were dissected, they found their stomachs full of plastic bags and broken glass bottles.
Some netizens analyzed that the human sonar caused the sonar of the pilot whale to fail and was forced to commit suicide. You must know that the sonar system of pilot whales is a tool they rely on to identify directions. System disorders are like blindness in human eyes and deafness in ears.
Some netizens also said that hallucinations caused the suicide of the whale family. After the brain of the pilot whale is infected by a type of parasite, it will trigger some hallucinogenic reactions, which leads to the pilot whale often coming to the beach to commit suicide.
Some netizens believe that animals, like humans, suffer from mental illness, especially when they feel stressed or depressed.
Of course, it is also possible that the whale died naturally, and was washed to the beach by the waves and mistakenly believed to have died stranded.
Experts believe that is because of the echolocation failure and they lose direction.
Biologists have no consensus on this phenomenon. To sum up, the opinions of experts are nothing more than these factors: accidental stimulation, disease, feeding, magnetic field, river bed, and tide, etc. Most of these factors are related to its echolocation system, which affects the whale's ability to distinguish direction and leads to disorientation.
Some scientists speculate that the main reason for the collective stranding of whales in Iceland this time is the tides. It is likely that the tidal power stations built near the sea or other factors have changed the law of the tides, causing the whales to miscalculate the time of the ebb and flow. They were left on the beach, and it was difficult to return to the sea, so they ran aground.
The sonar of the submarine gave the whales psychological severe oppression, and that feeling made them fall into a state of extreme loss of control. They were dominated by fear, which made them swim forward desperately, as long as they could not hear that sound, they will just run away quickly. This may be why these whales are all stranded and want to swim forward.
Whales do not rely on eyes to navigate and prey, but rely on the natural radar in their ears to emit and receive ultrasonic waves to determine their orientation. Whales can accurately judge the distance between themselves and obstacles based on the round-trip time of such ultrasonic waves.
And when they swim into the bay in order to chase fish schools and emit ultrasonic waves toward beaches with relatively large slopes, the echoes often have large errors, or even fail to receive the echoes at all, and they will also lose their direction and cause stranding.
