Humpback whales can be 60 feet long and weigh up to 80,000 pounds, but, surprisingly, that doesn’t mean they aren’t agile. Caine Delacy is a marine biologist who captures and shares some absolutely incredible footage of marine life, especially whales. Yesterday, Delacy shared a video on Instagram showing “seven seconds of pure wild.” In the video, a humpback whale chases some dolphins, showing both speed and agility.
“This is how fast and has agile humpbacks can be,” Delacy says in his caption. “Chasing dolphins and being able to keep up is no easy feat, yet we watched 5 whales doing just that for hours.”
Watch a humpback whale as it chases dolphins here:
Humpback whales have long, wing-like flippers that can be up to one-third of the animal’s total body length. These gentle giants are baleen whales, which means they use plates of baleen in their mouths to strain tiny plankton from the water for food.
They live in the northern hemisphere and migrate between summer feeding grounds and warmer waters in the winter. Like a human’s fingerprint, a humpback whale’s tail fluke has unique markings that biologists can use to differentiate one whale from another.
Did you expect a whale this large to be able to pivot and accelerate this quickly?