\
Science Puzzling Over a New Epidemic
of Race Suicide by Whales
Astounding Discovery of an Apparent Desire of Sea
Mammals to Return to Land Thai W as
Once Their
Home
Part of a Huge School of False
Killer Whales Stranded and Dying
on the Beach at Kommetjie, Near
Cape Town, South Africa, Where
They Had Caat Themselves.
By Lawrence G. Green
Author of “Great African Mysteries”
TV/HALES are hurling themselves
W onto the rocks at the Grotto
hundreds of whales,” said, a
voice over the country telephone line.
It sounded incredible. I drove 50
miles northwards up the Coast from
Cape Town, struggled through heavy
sand to the spot.
The sand and the rock pools were
red with the blood of 300 dead and
dying whales. Some lay breathing
stentorously under the sun. Round oth
ers the greedy seabirds were crying
and settling for the feast
"They came in suddenly through the
breakers, leaping over the rocks" a
farmer told me. "It was a determined
dash, and those that survived the bat
tering threw themselves on and on, un
til they reached the sand. Not ont
tried to return to open sea. They made
tremendous efforts to jump over all
obstacles—something drove them on
shore. I would never have imagined
such a thing if I had not seen it.
The farmer is one of few men who
have seen the death agony of the False
Killer Whales, a thing which no sci
entist can explain. Scientists, when
they heard of it, hurried to the lonely
beach. Among them was G. W. Ray
ner. marine biologist of the whaling
research ship. William Scoresby. He
related the few, weird facts that are
known about False Killer Whales.
It is, in spite of its name, a true
whale—a miniature whale, perhaps,
but nevertheless a mammal that
suckles its young and belongs to the
great family of cetacea. All whales
are not giants, and the False Killers,
like the pilot whales and the killers,
may be classed with the dolphin group.
In the second century, the Greek
writer Oppian deplared:
“This other excellent deed of the
Dolphins have I heard and admire.
When fell disease and fatal draws nigh
to them, they fail not to know it but
are aware of the end of life. Then
they flee the sea and the wide waters
of the .deep and come aground on the
shallow shores. And there they give
up their breath and receive their doom
upon the land. . . . Excellence and
majesty attend them even when they
perish, nor do they shame their glory
even when they die.”
Scientists, however, saw no reason
to accept this “excellent deed” as *
fact until the year 1027. Until then,
the False Killer Whale was regarded
as an extinct species. A fossilised
skull had been found in the Lincoln
A Biologist from the South African Museum at Cape Town
Examining the Teeth of a Dead Whale on the Bocks at the
Grotto Beach, Fifty Miles North of Cape Town, Where Three
Hundred False Killers Deliberately Came Ashore to Die.
shire fens late last century. Then In
1927 a school of about a hundred
whales was stranded on the coast of
Scotland. British Museum officials
were staggered by the discovery that
these whales were of the Identical
species represented by the skull.
The False Killer Whale thrust it
self for the first time on the atten
tion of a world entirely ignorant of its
presence. Then only were marked dif
ferences between the killer and the
False Killer discovered. The killer is
conspicuously marked with creamy
patches over the eye and along the
flank. The False Killer
is black all over. Both
species have formida
ble teeth. These are to
be expected in the
killer, which attacks larger whales
and tears away the blubber for food.
In the False Killer, feeding on cuttle
fish and squids, such large teeth are
remarkable.
A great deal of research was done,
but the mystery of the stranding itself
did not arouse much speculation at the
time. Since then, however, False Killer
Whales have been racing to death in
1** '
..■ j
mm*
The Eel Hanltmto a
Mysterious Inborn
Instinct to Travel
Across the Ocean to
Spawn and to Die.
Copyright, 1936, King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Murine Biologists As*
*ert That the Rudimen
tary Knuckles and Fin
ger Rones of the Whale
t'roves That These
Animals Once Lived on
Land. At Left Mr. F.
Htammwitr., the Fa
mous Explorer, Ex
hibits the Knuckled
Flipper of a Whale.
mass suicide on beaches as Tar apart
as South Africa, Zancibar and Tas
mania, and forced science to take heed.
For even the Iwgest of the cetaoea
(whale species)^afe often stranded,
and heretofore those stranding* have
been regarded as accidents.
On Christmas Eve, 1928, about a
hundred False Killer Whales (note the
similarity in numbers to the Scottish
stranding) flung themselves on the
beach at Kommctjie, near the Cape of
Good Hope. Kindly people tried to
save the lives of a few of tho smaller
whales — six and seven footers — by
(dragging them back to the sea. The
whales would have none of it. No
sooner did they recover the use of
fe their powerful bodies than they leapt
once more to the beach. Repeated at
tempts were made to carry out this
fantastic "life-saving," but it was evi
dent that the whales preferred the
beach
■ The False Killers revealed no sjgns
of illness. They were not cast ashore
by heavy weather, for It was a calm
night with no wind.
First find most obvious iH the pos
sibility of the leader of the school find
ing itself in surf or shallow water,
losing its head, and leading a flurried
rush In the wrong direction. But I
found one lying far up on a sandy
beach a full mile from the rest of the
school at the Grotto. It was plain
that it had followed no leader and that
It had not been swept there by the
tide.
An interesting idea, advanced by one
scientist wlio linked the two South
African strandings, was this: the sea
once covered large areas of the Cape
Peninsula, including both the narrow
*
Omul and Dying Wholes on the -
Rocha Along the Houth African
Count Where They Come Ashore
Again After the Natives Had Put
Them Back In the Water.
neck of land at Kommetjie. and the
low coast where Grotto beach lies. The
leaders of the two lost schools might
have been seeking an old passage, an
ancient sen route followed by schools
of long ago. Whales do not find their
way round the world by chance. They
pass on their knowledge as an instinct
to their young
It must not be forgotten that eels
migrato all the way across the Atlan
tic, from Europe, to fresbwaters of
America, to spawn and die. When the
young have reached maturity, they are
guided by unerring Instinct back
across the Atlantic to Europe, where
they remain until It la their time, too,
to spawn and die.
And we have the cases of the sal
mon of the Columbia River which sur-.
mount Incredible obstacles to make
their way to the headwaters which
they left as young, to reproduce.
Science would have to revise the
whole doctrine of the preservation of
the species If a suicidal instlncfcven
■ in the smallest insect could be proved.
: No; animals on land or In sea do not
commit suicide, however foolish the
§ manner of their death may seem. The
lemmings, which plunge into the sea
by the thousands, doomed to die be
ll cause they cannot swim, are driven by
Instinct to regain the element that was
^ the natural home of their ancestors
s, before they evolved into land' mam
i mals.
Whales once lived on land; the hn
5 tier whale still displays rudimentary
I knuckles and finger bonefl. So that if
we say the False Killer* were merely
returning to the earth where their an
cestors once wallowed, we may be as
near the truth as any baffled scientist.