BOWHEAD WHALE
IDENTIFICATION: A black, 50–65-foot whale with a huge head and arched jaw comprising 40 percent of its total length. DISTRIBUTION: Arctic waters of Canada and Greenland; Barents Sea. HABITAT: Ice- edge waters, bays, straits, estuaries. STUDY AREA: Isabella Bay, Baffin Island, Canada.
RIGHT WHALE
IDENTIFICATION: A 50—60-foot whale weighing up to 104 tons, whose enormous jaws are often encrusted with barnacles and callosites. DISTRIBUTION: Temperate and subarctic waters worldwide; vulnerable. HABITAT: Primarily oceangoing, but closer to land during breeding season. STUDY AREA: Near Valdes Peninsula, Argentina; subspecies B.g. australis, the Southern Right Whale.
Social Organization
Bowhead Whales socialize and travel in small groups of 2–7 animals as well as larger herds of 50–60 individuals; many animals are solitary as well. During much of the year—e.g., the spring migrations, and the socializing and feeding periods of summer and early fall—males and females (as well as different age groups) generally associate separately from each other. Right Whales may form aggregations of 100 or more individuals, although most social interactions occur during the mating period.
Description
Behavioral Expression: Intensive sexual encounters between male Bowhead Whales take place in shallow waters, involving three to six males at a time. Amid much splashing and churning of water, the males roll over each other with erect (unsheathed) penises, caress one another, slap the surface of the water with their tails or flippers, chase each other, and perform TAIL LOFTS, in which the tail is lifted high above the water while the whale sinks vertically down. Generally there is one central whale that the others are trying to copulate with, although this whale often rolls belly up in the water, perhaps attempting to avoid their advances (similar to the behavior of females during heterosexual mating activity). Nevertheless, a male Bowhead sometimes inserts his penis into the genital slit of another male. Sessions of homosexual activity can last for 40 minutes or more, during which males often produce loud and complex vocalizations that resemble roars, screams, or trumpetings. Both male and female Right Whales also engage in homosexual activity, involving such behaviors as caressing, rolling and pushing, and flipper and fluke slaps.
Bowhead Whales also have a relatively high incidence of intersexual or hermaphrodite individuals with female external genitalia and mammary glands combined with male chromosomes and internal sexual organs such as testes (which are contained within the body cavity in this species, as in other cetaceans).
Frequency: Homosexual activity is characteristic of certain times of the year: in Bowheads, it generally occurs during the late summer and fall, while in Right Whales, it occurs early in the season for females, and late in the season for males. Beyond this, it is difficult to quantify the frequency of same-sex interactions. Among Bowheads, social activity is common during the fall, and about 40 percent of all socializing groups include three or more whales (the configuration typical of sexual interactions). Although the exact percentage of these interactions that are homosexual is not known, in two out of three such groups in which the sexes of all the animals could be determined, the sexual activity involved only males. It is possible, therefore, that a significant proportion of fall sexual activity—perhaps even a majority—is homosexual. Intersexuality in Bowheads is relatively common, occurring in about 1 in 4,000 individuals (compared with a rate of 1 in 62,400 humans for the same type of intersexuality).
Aerial view of six male Bowhead Whales participating in intensive homosexual activity at the surface of the water; some of the males are displaying erections
Orientation: In Bowhead Whales, homosexual behavior appears to be typical of adolescent or younger adult males, so it may be that individuals engage in sequential or chronological bisexuality over their lives, with an initial period of homosexuality followed by heterosexuality. This is speculative, however, because the life histories of individual whales have not been tracked. In Right Whales, homosexual behavior is not restricted to younger animals, but in fact occurs among whales of all ages; the extent of heterosexual activities (if any) of such individuals are not fully known.
Nonreproductive and Alternative Heterosexualities
Because Bowhead and Right Whales generally mate throughout the year—and in particular outside of the female’s fertilizable period—a large proportion of heterosexual activity is nonprocreative. In both species, heterosexual copulation usually involves a group of several males trying to mate with one female, who often tries to escape their attentions. At times, the interaction can become violent: groups of male Right Whales searching for females have been described as “rape gangs,” and sometimes two or more males cooperate in forcing a female underwater so that they can take turns mating with her. In some cases, calves get caught in the middle of a heterosexual mating attempt and are hit, crushed, and perhaps even killed. Females of these two species generally do not breed every year. In Right Whales, for example, five or more years may elapse between calves, with the result that sometimes less than half of the adult females in an area are breeding.
Other Species
Intersexuality or transgender has also been reported among Fin Whales (Balaenoptera physalus): one individual, for example, had both male and female reproductive organs, including a uterus, vagina, elongated clitoris, and testes.
Sources
*asterisked references discuss homosexuality/transgender
*Bannister, J. L. (1963) “An Intersexual Fin Whale Balaenoptera physalus (L.) from South Georgia.” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 141:811–22.
Clark, C. W. (1983) “Acoustic Communication and Behavior of the Southern Right Whale (Eubalaena australis ).” In R. S. Payne, ed., Communication and Behavior of Whales, pp. 163–98. American Association for the Advancement of Science Selected Symposium 76. Boulder: Westview Press.
Everitt, R. D., and B. D. Krogman (1979) “Sexual Behavior of Bowhead Whales Observed Off the North Coast of Alaska.” Arctic 32:277–80.
Finley, K. J. (1990) “Isabella Bay, Baffin Island, an Important Historical and Present-Day Concentration Area for the Endangered Bowhead Whale (Balaena mysticetus) of the Eastern Canadian Arctic.” Arctic 43:137–52.
*Koski, W. R., R. A. Davis, G.W. Miller, and D. E. Withrow (1993) “Reproduction.” In J. J. Burns, J. J. Montague, and C. J. Cowles, eds., The Bowhead Whale, pp. 239–74. Lawrence, Kans.: Society for Marine Mammalogy.
*Moore, S. E., and R. R. Reeves (1993) “Distribution and Movement.” In J. J. Burns, J. J. Montague, and C. J. Cowles, eds., The Bowhead Whale, pp. 313–86. Lawrence, Kans.: Society for Marine Mammalogy.
*Ostman, J. (1991) “Changes in Aggressive and Sexual Behavior Between Two Male Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in a Captive Colony.” In K. Pryor and K. S. Norris, eds., Dolphin Societies: Discoveries and Puzzles, pp. 304—17. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Payne, R. (1995) Among Whales. New York: Scribner.
*Richardson, W. J., and K. J. Finley (1989) Comparison of Behavior of Bowhead Whales of the Davis Strait and Bering/Beaufort Stocks. Report from LGL Ltd., King City, Ontario, for U.S. Minerals
