TikTok celebrity Brodie Moss was out in his transparent kayak with several cameras when he saw a surprising sight. A whale tail breached the surface in front of him and then... just stood there. He'd never seen such a thing, and frankly, neither have most of us. Sticking a camera underwater, he sees that the humpback whale is just floating upside down, airing out her tail. We can assume it's a female, as her calf was there, too.
This is not an unknown behavior. It's called tail sailing, and it's been seen by others, but no one knows why whales do it. There are many possibilities. It could be a good position for resting, or it may be a way to warm up or cool down, since the tail has a lot of vascular activity. While the term tail sailing is pretty cool, there's no way it's used for propulsion considering the size of a whale compared to its tail. Incidents of tail sailing have been observed all over the world, and can last as long as 12 minutes. Read more about tail sailing at ScienceAlert. -via Damn Interesting