THE longest-known seasonal movement by any mammal has been discovered in a group of humpback whales that have travelled 8300 kilometres across the Pacific.
The humpbacks swam from the Antarctic Peninsula, up the west coast of South America and across the equator to waters off central America.
A return journey along the same route would mean that the animals covered at least 16,000 kilometres yearly in their quest to breed in one habitat - the tropics - and feed in the other.
The finding, reported in the publication Biology Letters, exceeds the previous known record migration by humpbacks, along the same route, by up to 600 kilometres.
It offers important clues to the reproductive habits of the species, which is still trying to recover from 20th-century whaling.
US biologist Kristin Rasmussen led a team that tracked seven humpbacks by photographing their individually marked tail flukes.
The greatest distance, 8461 kilometres, was travelled by one individual of unknown sex that was seen off Panama in 2001, and photographed again in Gerlache Strait off the Antarctic Peninsula in 2003.
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