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Characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3D-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground

Getting maternal milk through nursing is vital for all newborn mammals. Despite its importance, nursing has been poorly documented in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Nursing is difficult to observe underwater without disturbing the whales and is usually impossible to observe from a ship. W...

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Autores principales: Ratsimbazafindranahaka, Maevatiana N., Huetz, Chloé, Andrianarimisa, Aristide, Reidenberg, Joy S., Saloma, Anjara, Adam, Olivier, Charrier, Isabelle
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8858581/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35194528
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12945
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author Ratsimbazafindranahaka, Maevatiana N.
Huetz, Chloé
Andrianarimisa, Aristide
Reidenberg, Joy S.
Saloma, Anjara
Adam, Olivier
Charrier, Isabelle
author_facet Ratsimbazafindranahaka, Maevatiana N.
Huetz, Chloé
Andrianarimisa, Aristide
Reidenberg, Joy S.
Saloma, Anjara
Adam, Olivier
Charrier, Isabelle
author_sort Ratsimbazafindranahaka, Maevatiana N.
collection PubMed
description Getting maternal milk through nursing is vital for all newborn mammals. Despite its importance, nursing has been poorly documented in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Nursing is difficult to observe underwater without disturbing the whales and is usually impossible to observe from a ship. We attempted to observe nursing from the calf’s perspective by placing CATS cam tags on three humpback whale calves in the Sainte Marie channel, Madagascar, Indian Ocean, during the breeding seasons. CATS cam tags are animal-borne multi-sensor tags equipped with a video camera, a hydrophone, and several auxiliary sensors (including a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis magnetometer, and a depth sensor). The use of multi-sensor tags minimized potential disturbance from human presence. A total of 10.52 h of video recordings were collected with the corresponding auxiliary data. Video recordings were manually analyzed and correlated with the auxiliary data, allowing us to extract different kinematic features including the depth rate, speed, Fluke Stroke Rate (FSR), Overall Body Dynamic Acceleration (ODBA), pitch, roll, and roll rate. We found that suckling events lasted 18.8 ± 8.8 s on average (N = 34) and were performed mostly during dives. Suckling events represented 1.7% of the total observation time. During suckling, the calves were visually estimated to be at a 30–45° pitch angle relative to the midline of their mother’s body and were always observed rolling either to the right or to the left. In our auxiliary dataset, we confirmed that suckling behavior was primarily characterized by a high average absolute roll and additionally we also found that it was likely characterized by a high average FSR and a low average speed. Kinematic features were used for supervised machine learning in order to subsequently detect suckling behavior automatically. Our study is a proof of method on which future investigations can build upon. It opens new opportunities for further investigation of suckling behavior in humpback whales and the baleen whale species.
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spelling pubmed-88585812022-02-21 Characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3D-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground Ratsimbazafindranahaka, Maevatiana N. Huetz, Chloé Andrianarimisa, Aristide Reidenberg, Joy S. Saloma, Anjara Adam, Olivier Charrier, Isabelle PeerJ Animal Behavior Getting maternal milk through nursing is vital for all newborn mammals. Despite its importance, nursing has been poorly documented in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Nursing is difficult to observe underwater without disturbing the whales and is usually impossible to observe from a ship. We attempted to observe nursing from the calf’s perspective by placing CATS cam tags on three humpback whale calves in the Sainte Marie channel, Madagascar, Indian Ocean, during the breeding seasons. CATS cam tags are animal-borne multi-sensor tags equipped with a video camera, a hydrophone, and several auxiliary sensors (including a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis magnetometer, and a depth sensor). The use of multi-sensor tags minimized potential disturbance from human presence. A total of 10.52 h of video recordings were collected with the corresponding auxiliary data. Video recordings were manually analyzed and correlated with the auxiliary data, allowing us to extract different kinematic features including the depth rate, speed, Fluke Stroke Rate (FSR), Overall Body Dynamic Acceleration (ODBA), pitch, roll, and roll rate. We found that suckling events lasted 18.8 ± 8.8 s on average (N = 34) and were performed mostly during dives. Suckling events represented 1.7% of the total observation time. During suckling, the calves were visually estimated to be at a 30–45° pitch angle relative to the midline of their mother’s body and were always observed rolling either to the right or to the left. In our auxiliary dataset, we confirmed that suckling behavior was primarily characterized by a high average absolute roll and additionally we also found that it was likely characterized by a high average FSR and a low average speed. Kinematic features were used for supervised machine learning in order to subsequently detect suckling behavior automatically. Our study is a proof of method on which future investigations can build upon. It opens new opportunities for further investigation of suckling behavior in humpback whales and the baleen whale species. PeerJ Inc. 2022-02-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8858581/ /pubmed/35194528 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12945 Text en ©2022 Ratsimbazafindranahaka et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Ratsimbazafindranahaka, Maevatiana N.
Huetz, Chloé
Andrianarimisa, Aristide
Reidenberg, Joy S.
Saloma, Anjara
Adam, Olivier
Charrier, Isabelle
Characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3D-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground
title Characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3D-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground
title_full Characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3D-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground
title_fullStr Characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3D-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground
title_full_unstemmed Characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3D-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground
title_short Characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3D-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground
title_sort characterizing the suckling behavior by video and 3d-accelerometry in humpback whale calves on a breeding ground
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8858581/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35194528
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12945
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