Listening to the microphone 200 ft. below. She is the marine biologist you hear narrating the video.

The males sing multi-year songs with nested complexity to woo the ladies. When separated for months, they pick up their song from where they left off. Near, far, wherever you are…

“Marine biologist Philip Clapham describes the whale song as probably the most complex in the animal kingdom… The song is constantly and slowly evolving over time… An analysis of 19 years of whale songs found that while general patterns in song could be spotted, the same combination never recurred.” (wikipedia, with audio tracks on the right)

Since they have similar sleep patterns as dolphins (shutting one hemisphere of their brain down at a time) it made me wonder if they have similar sonic visualizations as hypothesized for the dolphins?

11 responses to “Whale Song”

  1. Please, could you correct the link to the excellent wikipedia entry.
    Then, delete this comment. Thanks.

  2. got it. thanks for catching the mangled URL…

  3. The wikipedia entry properly cite the seminal work of Roger Payne and Scott McVay, who studied the behavior of whales since 1967 and discovered that humpback whales sing songs. They published the first paper on the matter in Science (173, 585) in 1971 -omitted in wikipedia-. Payne is also known for his theory that the sounds of fin and blue whales can be heard across oceans and warning about the effects of sound pollution in oceans.

    Your post reminds me this part of Cosmos – Episode 11 by Carl Sagan.
    Good stuff from the past.

    BTW, do you want whale ringtones?

  4. Fascinating creatures… amazing communication patterns, maybe we can learn more about ourselves through studying whales… love Carl Sagan’s cosmos also!

  5. I do believe they have sonic visualizations just like dolphins… close distant relatives…

  6. How funny Carl Sagan is popping up here… I was mentioning him (his language level for general audience) in an email tonight…

  7. You can…. click the ► button on the top here

  8. listening to the whales brought a lump to my throat, highly emotional sound, hauntingly beautiful

  9. The sound, how wonderful.

  10. the things we do for love,
    the things we do for love…

    ♫ ♪ ♥♡

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