Did We Change Whale Songs?
Posted by TheMuseumOfScience@reddit | whales | View on Reddit | 17 comments
Did you know whale songs have changed over the years? 🐋🎶
A newly rediscovered 1949 recording from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution captures the oldest known humpback whale song on record and offers a rare snapshot of how these animals once sounded. Humpback whales use song to communicate across vast underwater distances, where sound travels farther than light and hearing plays a critical role in navigation and social connection. But the ocean of 1949 was far quieter than the one whales move through today, before the rise of constant ship traffic, sonar, and offshore industrial noise.
violetdetheveste@reddit
I'd love to read something extensive about this.
ussrname1312@reddit
Look up the effects of noise pollution. Most ships make sounds at the same frequencies that whales use to communicate, so whales have had to change their songs/volume to be heard.
Judicator-Aldaris@reddit
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.019
1984SKIN@reddit
Pollutants.
Mental-Panic7046@reddit
They still sound like that from that old recording sometimes. I hear them almost every day for about six months in Hawaii when they come down from Alaska. Their songs change every year if you listen to recordings done and they’re different in different parts of the world from French Polynesia, Tonga, the US west coast, etc. noise pollution is a thing and does disrupt animals underwater. The males sing to attract the females and they gotta get a new tune every year to woo the ladies.
LAWhaleGuide@reddit
That so cool. the yearly song evolution thing is wild to me..what's even crazier is that the changes spread westward across the Pacific. i was reading that researchers have tracked new phrases popping up in Australia and then showing up months later in French Polynesia, like a hit song making its way across the radio 😂
Mental-Panic7046@reddit
Sounds travel extremely well underwater. So much so that there are recordings of whales from like a half way around the globe. There are different salinity levels in the water in some areas of the world and they are super deep but whales have been recorded clicking in them. I’m sure they talk to each other every year when they meet up in the arctic or Antarctic before they split back to the islands they travel too.
Gnosrat@reddit
That's awesome.
This-Honey7881@reddit
Cool
nightseeker59@reddit
Humpback whale song is culturally transmitted across ocean basins over time. In the Southern hemisphere, this can occur over one season. Look up Ellen Garland for research on this.
SignificantYou3240@reddit
We changed our music A LOT in the last 75 years…
Caribbean-Winter@reddit
I think to prove this, we would have to record again in the same place, at the same time, to get a better idea. Mating calls are loud compared to other calls.
TesseractToo@reddit
Well they change a little each year so they're only positing that one possibility but there's probably many reasons overlapping including the natural annual change in "verse" of a song
Also they only played two clips of different songs that are like 20 minutes to 1/2 hour long, were those the same timestamp? Do we even know if the old recording starts at the beginning?
Sorry but this clip is interesting but the question, the way it's presented here, isn't very scientific
hipshotguppy@reddit
I don't know much about whales but I see a lot of clips on this subreddit of whales interacting with humans. Is this something that happened back in the day when whales were hunted or have they learned to not fear us? I always have to remind myself they're mammals and capable of discernment. To me the '49 recording sounds like it might be distress. (Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing.)
keighleypage@reddit
They also have different songs, for different messages, across different geologically grouped humpbacks, so basically different dialects. It’s definitely also true that the drastic changes in environmental noise have severely impacted their ability to hear one another and be heard. I have a record of humpback sounds from the 1970s and it includes both of these calls and everything between!
Eidolon58@reddit
Nowadays they all just hum Cher's "Believe." They can't get it out of their minds.
Boysenberry_17@reddit
DO YOU BELIEEEEEVE IN LIFE AFTER LOVE?