Humpback whales in the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean have been isolated in their habitat for 70,000 years, essentially making them the most isolated population of these cetaceans on Earth.
This is the main conclusion of an international study involving researchers from the American Museum of Natural History, the Society for the Conservation of Wildlife, and the Omani Society for the Environment.
In an essay published in the journal PLOS ONE , these experts emphasize that it is an extremely unusual phenomenon, especially in a species that is characterized by its long migrations , which in some cases cover more than 9,000 kilometers in distance.
Analysis of the mitochondrial and nuclear DNA of 47 specimens has confirmed that these animals are genetically different from those found in other regions of the southern hemisphere and the north Pacific . However, scientists do not know if this translates into different behaviors, and even doubts about the moment in which the separation between these and the other humpbacks originated.
Their hypothesis is that the ancestors of these acrobatic rorculaes , which can exceed 15 meters in length and 36 tons in weight, were genetically split from the others at the end of the Pleistocene , when several glacial episodes and changes in monsoon intensity occurred which led them to vary the mating season.
