Humpback whale alters song if another one sings along

Scientists have come to the conclusion that male humpback whales can communicate throught their singing. Amung all humpback whales males are the only one that can boom out long strings of phrase of hums and whups and chirps. Whales singing is so powerful it can make a boat vibrate. Scientists use the word song to describe this patterned male vocalization (singing), just as they do for  bird singing.

Humpback whales dont sing to claim teritory  like songbirds do,but they do try to win a females like to songbirds do. Normally three to eight males surround a female and battle for the position closest to her. Almost all go away with battel scares. There has been no record of whales swimming tord or away from the song. Whale s often sing the same phrase several times in a row before switching to another.

Scientists have learned how to can eavesdrop on whales. They dropped recorders weighted with sandbags into the ocean to. From the recorders they could tell where the whales were and could reconstruct their movements. Pretty amazing I think. In the sea of sound recordings, they found 14 cases in which a male sang alone for at least 45 minutes and then continued for another 45 minutes after another male started singing. Scientists Cholewiak noticed two changes in song when humpbacks sang together. If humpback songs follow the pattern of birds, the messages could get pretty macho. And females could be tuning in.

How do you think a male whale gets closest to the femal whale?

Why do you think whales sing the same phrases more than once?

Author of this artical: Susan Milius

Published November 7th, 2009