Rare drone footage of blue whales feeding has been released by a group of Oregon State University scientists.The footage, uploaded on April 18, shows an overhead view of a blue whale “lunge-feeding” – a process where the massive mammal makes a sudden lunge forward to consume a pack of krill.According to Leigh Torres, an Assistant Professor at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, the video also reveals that blue whales are selective about the feeding process.“We can see the whale making choices, which is really extraordinary because aerial observations of blue whales feeding on krill are rare,” Torres said in a press release. "The whale bypasses certain krill patches – presumably because the nutritional payoff isn’t sufficient – and targets other krill patches that are more lucrative. We think this is because blue whales are so big, and stopping to lunge-feed and then speeding up again is so energy-intensive, that they try to maximize their effort.”In the video, Torres says that drones are a “great way to film [the whales’] behavior without disturbing their behavior at all, unlike other aerial methods like a helicopter or a plane, which can’t hover or make a lot of noise.”