Summer is here — the time of year when bored teens are up to no good. It’s a nearly-universal experience. Combine creatures without fully developed prefrontal cortexes and unlimited downtime with no school, and chaos ensues. It turns out, this is true even in the wild. A new study shows that all teens do dumb stuff — no matter what species they are!
Just like human teenagers, killer whale teenagers make some … questionable decisions in the spirit of a good time. A multinational group of orca experts sponsored by the governments of Spain and Portugal found that the boat attacks — more than 673 since 2020! — by whales were done by “a bunch of bored teenaged orcas looking for something to do,” cetacean expert Alexandre Zerbini, who chairs the International Whaling Commission, said in the report, per USA Today. That’s right — bored teens are playing with boat rudders, to the detriment of humans on board.
“It starts in the spring, goes way off the charts in the summer and goes away in fall. That’s because the whales and boats are in the same area at the same time,” Naomi Rose, a senior scientist with the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington, D.C., who was part of the working group, said, per USA TODAY.
The researchers hypothesized that a young orca butted his head against a boat rudder, knocking off a piece of it and thought “this is fun.”
“There’s documented evidence of the orcas then playing with the pieces,” Zerbini explained, adding that this trend seemed to catch on, leading to the increase in incidents.
This isn’t the first time bored killer whale teens have started a trend. According to Rose, a group of orca teens in the Pacific Northwest started a habit of — wait for it — carrying dead salmon on their heads in 1987, which spread to other adolescents and even adults that summer. (Who needs TikTok to make weird things go viral?!)
Researchers recommended boaters take a series of measures to make rudders look less appealing to these teen whales, including placing bumpy materials on the rudders or hanging lines from the boats. And leaving the interaction immediately if they come across a teen orca interested in the boat.
“We don’t want to see more boats being sunk and we don’t want to see people in distress,” Zerbini said, per WXPI News. “But we also don’t want to see the animals being hurt. And we have to remember that this is their habitat and we’re in the way.”
It’s hard to let teens be teens, but like any fad, this one will hopefully fade too. (Maybe once the adults start doing it, the teens will realize it’s not cool anymore?) In the meantime, parents of human teens can take heart knowing that you are definitely not alone. And if you need help on getting your teens to actually listen to you, check out this expert advice HERE.
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