Humpback whales sing songs that can travel half the length of planet: Study

Whales have always been thought of as the smartest of mammals. Now a study published by the Royal Society Open Science has found that humpback whales communicate using songs that traverse through the length and breadth of the ocean, as far as 8000 kilometres.

Reportedly, a team of researchers at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador recorded songs first heard from the humpback whales off the coast of eastern Australia. Fast forward a few years and the same song was picked up all the way in Ecuador, suggesting that the voice travelled across the South Pacific Ocean.

“Half the globe is now vocally connected for whales. And that’s insane,” Ellen Garland, author of the study and a marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

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Fascinatingly, the songs sung by the humpback whale may change over time. The authors of the study attributed the change to two different phenomenons viz. progressive cultural evolution and cultural revolution.

In the first category, the songs follow the basic evolutionary process wherein different whales subtract, add or delete their units and phrases in the song. The little changes in each iteration of the song slowly lead to a completely different version that then spreads around in the colony.

In the second category, a neighbouring population comes around with its novel song and the existing whale population quickly laps it up.

Researchers cited an example of a male song on the east coast of Australia singing a completely different song compared to the local whales. However, it matched the song sung on the west coast.

Within two years, all males month the east coast started singing the same song, suggesting that the cultural revolution amongst the whales was much more rapid than we had thought of previously.

“These really rapid cultural changes are not seen in any other animal species, it’s happened so fast.” added Garland.

Garland also asserted that these songs travelled when neighbouring groups of whales passed within an acoustic range of each other.

This passing usually happens when whales are leaving their breeding grounds and migrating to foraging grounds.

However, it is still unclear what the songs stand for. Whether the male whales use it as a mating call with females or to mediate male-to-male interaction or as a multi-message signal, it remains shrouded in clouds of mystery.

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(With inputs from agencies)

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