New study shows adolescent whales do stupid things like regular teenagers

Summer is here – the time of year when bored teenagers are up to no good. It's an almost universal experience. Combine creatures without a fully developed prefrontal cortex and unlimited downtime without school, and chaos ensues. It turns out this is true even in nature. A new study shows that all teenagers do stupid things, regardless of their species!

Just like human teenagers, killer whale teenagers make them… questionable decisions in a spirit of good times. A multinational group of orca experts sponsored by the Spanish and Portuguese governments found that the boat had attacked — more than 673 since 2020! — by whales were committed by “a group of bored adolescent orcas looking for something to do,” cetacean expert Alexandre Zerbini, who chairs the International Whaling Commission, said in the report. USA Today. It's true: bored teenagers are playing with boat rudders, to the detriment of the humans on board.

“It starts in the spring, tops the charts in the summer and disappears in the fall. That’s because the whales and the boats are in the same area at the same time,” said Naomi Rose, a senior scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington, D.C., who was part of the working group. USA TODAY.

Researchers theorize that a young orca hit its head on a boat's rudder, knocking a piece off, and thought “that's fun.”

“There is documented evidence that orcas then play with the coins,” Zerbini explained, adding that this trend seemed to be spreading, leading to an increase in incidents.

This isn't the first time bored teenage killer whales have started a trend. According to Rose, a group of adolescent orcas in the Pacific Northwest developed the habit of—wait for it—carrying dead salmon on their heads in 1987, which spread to other adolescents and even adults that was there. (Who needs TikTok to make weird things go viral?!)

The researchers recommended that boaters take a series of steps to make rudders less attractive to these adolescent whales, including placing dented materials on the rudders or hanging lines from boats. And immediately leave the interaction if they encounter a teenage orca interested in the boat.

“We don't want to see more boats sinking and we don't want to see people in distress,” Zerbini said, according to WXPI News. “But we also don’t want the animals to get hurt. And we have to remember that this is their habitat and we are in their way.

It's hard to let teenagers be teenagers, but like any fad, this one will hopefully fade away too. (Maybe once adults start doing it, teenagers will realize it's no longer cool?) In the meantime, parents of human teenagers can take comfort in knowing that you're definitely not not alone. And if you need help getting your teens to actually listen to you, check out these expert tips HERE.

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