They were just two regular flatfish caught up in extraordinary events – with each killing a pilot whale 1000 times its size.

Pilot whales and common soles normally live separate lives. But when one tried to eat the other it led to a fight to the death, with the whale asphyxiated when the fish became trapped in its blowhole trying to wriggle its way out of the animal.

This “Jonah-meets-David-and-Goliath” tale is the first record of a pilot whale suffocating on a fish since 1581, say scientists. Even more strangely, it happened twice in the space of a few weeks.


The events took place in November 2014, when a pod of 30-40 long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas) – normally found in the North Atlantic, in deep offshore waters and along the edge of continental shelves – was spotted just a few hundred metres off the coasts of Belgium and the eastern UK.

They soon vanished, but a badly decomposed pilot whale washed up on the Dutch coast six weeks later.

Lonneke IJsseldijk, a post-mortem researcher in the faculty of veterinary medicine at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, examined the whale and found, to her astonishment, a common sole (Solea solea) stuck partly in the blowhole through which the whale breathes.

Three weeks later, another dead whale appeared: “When I got to the beach the second time, I saw this tail sticking out of the blowhole and I thought: ‘no way!’.”

Strange diet

Pilot whales eat squid and other cephalopods, but IJsseldijk thinks they were forced to change their diets while visiting shallower waters.

The common sole was, however, an unfortunate choice: these fish have flexible bodies that can roll up in any direction, as well as acrobatic skills.

IJsseldijk thinks their dexterity inside the whales’ mouths enabled them to find and squeeze into their blowholes. Another possibility is that the whales inadvertently pushed the fish into their blowholes when trying to swallow them. Whales have unusual larynxes, which they can dislocate when trying to eat fish. Moving the larynx around may have given the fish the push they needed, the scientists wrote in their study.

No one knows what the whales were doing so far from home. Noise from the construction of wind turbines and naval seismic soundings may have driven them there, says IJsseldijk.

Nicola Hodgins, head of science and research for the charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation, agrees that noise pollution is a likely culprit for the pod’s arrival.

“Everyone is intrigued about what is going on,” she says. “The pilot whales were in completely the wrong place.”

Another clue comes from the fact that a third whale in the pod died, apparently from a long-term disease, while they were in the southern North Sea. She may have become disorientated while sick, leading her family with her. Whales are known to stick around weak relatives.

Although there is little sign at the moment that pilot whales are being generally displaced by anthropogenic changes such as noise or loss of prey, IJsseldijk says the work shows how difficult it may be for them to adapt should they have to shift and find new food sources.

Journal reference: PLOS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141951

Image credits (top to bottom): NHPA/Photoshot; IJsseldijk et al.

Read more: “Orca invasion: Killer whales in a warmer world“;

“Lost leviathans: Hunting the world’s missing whales“