MASS SUICIDE OF WHALES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 72, 24 February 1937, Page 4

MASS SUICIDE OF WHALES.

DASHED TO DEATH ON CAPE ROCKS. . Scientists in Capetown are again puzzled by the mass suicide of a school of false killer whales reported from Stompneus, on the coast about 100 miles north of Table Bay. About 35 whales, 1 'males and females, with one calf, dashed themselves in frenzy over a jagged reef and landed up in the undergrowth above high-water mark. The whales were terribly cut about by the sharp rocks in their struggle, and some of them even broke their teeth on the rocks. Only a year ago another school of false killer whales dashed thmselves to death in the. same‘ way near the same spot, and the same thing happened nearer Capetown in 1928. Nobody can explain the urge that impels the whales to suicide. Some of the explanations are that the whales go mad; that sand churned up in the water irritates them ; that they dash into shallow water in pursuit of fish and then flounder about until exhausted; that* they themselves are chased by sharks; and that they are following an ancestral urge. All these suggestions’’ are mere conjecture, however. Nobody knows why they do it.