In a record-breaking journey, a female humpback whale has travelled across a quarter of the globe, a distance of at least 10,000 km. The event, reported in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters, is the longest documented movement by a mammal. Its voyage was also twice the distance that the whales typically migrate each season to new breeding grounds. Scientists say the extreme behaviour shows how flexible these animals are. The female whale was spotted and photographed twice – once at its regular breeding ground in Brazil, then later off the coast of Madagascar. The shortest distance between these two locations is 9,800 km.The research team, led by Dr Peter Stevick from the College of the Atlantic in Maine, US, thinks the whale may have travelled this far in two distinct journeys. “If I had to guess, I'd say this animal did a normal migration to the Antarctic [to feed] and went to Madagascar from there,” Dr Stevick told BBC News. “If I were to draw a track for it, it would be from Brazil to the Southern Ocean and from there into the Indian Ocean.” The scientists were able to identify the animal from photographs that were taken of its tail, or fluke. Each humpback whale has unique markings on the pale underside of its fluke. The team is involved in a long-term study, collecting and examining the pictures of the whale flukes in an effort to develop a “big picture” of humpback behaviour and their migration patterns.Such a long-distance movement between different breeding grounds is very rare.