Gray whales in Baja California frequently interact with humans in a remarkable shift. They were known to fight back when harpooned, even damaging boats, earning the nickname "devil fish."
Gray whales put up such a fight against whalers and their boats they earned the nickname "devil fish." Today, in the same places where the whales were hunted to the brink of extinction just decades ago, they swim right up to boats, enchanting and even befriending the people in them.
One of those remarkable encounters was captured in March in the Ojo de Liebre, a lagoon in Mexico's Baja Peninsula. The video showed a gray whale right beside a boat, allowing the captain to pick whale lice off its head.
Although some thought the whale was purposefully going to the captain for help with the whale lice — which are actually crustaceans, not insects — experts told Insider that's probably not the case.
Still, the fact that the gray whales of the Baja lagoons interact with boats and humans at all baffles researchers.
"This is what's so strange. They were hunted almost to extinction," Andrew Trites, director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, told Insider. "You would think being near a person in a boat is the last thing the few remaining gray whales would've ever done and they would've had this disposition to avoid them at all costs, the few that survived."
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If I understood it correctly, they're at their breeding grounds when they're actively approaching humans?
I would guess it has to do with hormones being the driving force behind a more amicable, curious attitude.
What are you? Are you safe for baby to be around? At the same time their bodies are likely attuned to attention and socialising so as to not discard their babies.
Humans tend to become very interested in connecting with family during and after pregnancy. Many an aversive in-law has been invited to visit after a baby has arrived.
The hormones that often surge during mating and/or birthing often suppresses more aggressive tendencies. Even solitary species tend to come together for breeding, even if they normally would fight to their death. That's largely a hormonal response AFAIK.