Whale Surfacing Behaviour - Lobtailing and Slapping

Lobtailing and Slapping

Lobtailing is the act of a whale or dolphin lifting its flukes out of the water and then bringing them down onto the surface of the water hard and fast in order to make a loud slap. Similarly, species with large flippers may also slap them against the water.

Like breaching, lobtailing is common amongst active cetacean species such as sperm, humpback, right and grey whales. It is less common, but still occasionally occurs, amongst the other large whales. Porpoises and river dolphins rarely lobtail, but it is a very common phenomenon amongst oceanic dolphins. Lobtailing is more common within species that have a complex social order than those where animals are more likely to be solitary.

Large whales tend to lobtail by positioning themselves vertically downwards into the water and then slapping the surface by bending the tail stock. Dolphins, however, tend to remain horizontal and make the slap via a jerky whole body movement. All species are likely to slap several times in a single session. The sound of a lobtail can be heard underwater several hundred metres from the site of a slap. This has led to speculation amongst scientists that lobtailing is, like breaching, a form of non-vocal communication. However, studies of bowhead whales have shown that the noise of a lobtail travels much less well than that of a vocal call or a breach. Thus the lobtail is probably important visually as well as acoustically, and may be a sign of aggression.

Some suggest that lobtailing in humpback whales is a means of foraging. The hypothesis is that the loud noise causes fish to become frightened, thus tightening their school together, making it easier for the humpback to feed on them.