doodlesnote00NATURE'S NOTES IN PLAIN ENGLISH
Under the sea, the males are all singing the same tune.
Humpback whale songs are built like ours: notes grouped into phrases, phrases repeated into themes, themes strung into a song. A new song can pass from whale to whale across much of the Pacific within a year.
Build a song01Principles
02THE SHORT ANSWER
Whale song has a structure researchers can map,
and it changes year by year.
THE SINGERS
Researchers have recorded hundreds of humpbacks since the 1960s, and the songs seem to come from males. Singing is most common in the breeding season.
Build a songWHO IS WHO
NOAA says the patterns and shapes of each whale's tail fluke are distinctive enough to identify individuals, which lets scientists track singers over time.
How songs travelLISTENING IN
Researchers record songs and transcribe each sound unit to compare songs between years and between populations.
See the numbers03HOW A SONG IS BUILT
Pick a level to see how humpback song is put together. The bar shows how long each level runs.
Based on the structure described in a 2022 Scientific Reports study and the University of Texas Marine Science Institute.
04TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
One figure on how quickly songs move,
one on how faithfully they are copied.
1 year
Typical delay, east Australia to New Caledonia
Songs first heard off east Australia usually turn up in New Caledonia the following year, then move on east towards Tonga, American Samoa, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia.
SPREAD · SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
29 of 40
Themes shared by both populations
Across six song types recorded from 2009 to 2015, 29 of 40 themes were shared by the east Australian and New Caledonian whales; themes unique to one population were rarely sung.
FIDELITY · SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
The east Australian population is about 25,000 whales and New Caledonia about 1,200, according to figures cited in the 2022 study. Researchers suggest the larger western populations drive the eastward spread.
05FOUR THINGS TO LISTEN FOR
Recordings of humpback song are easy to find. These are the features researchers pay attention to.
Notice the range, from deep moans to high whistles and squeaks.
Listen for a short phrase repeated several times: that run is a theme.
When the repeating pattern switches, the singer has moved to the next theme in the song.
Songs change from year to year, so recordings from different years can sound quite different.
06HOW SONGS TRAVEL
Each year's song changes a little through small progressive changes that all the singers adopt, known as evolutions. Sometimes a completely new song arrives from the west Australian population and replaces the old one: a revolution.
A study of 11 years of South Pacific recordings, led from the University of Queensland, found that new songs almost always started in the west, near Australia, and spread east. Researchers think the learning may happen on shared feeding grounds or migration routes.
07Questions
Song appears to come from males. Researchers who have recorded hundreds of humpbacks since the 1960s report that the songs all seem to come from males, and singing is most common in the breeding season.
Nobody knows for sure. Scientists suggest the songs may attract females or warn off rival males, and some research points to social roles such as male bonding.
Individual songs usually last several minutes, and a single whale can keep singing, repeating the song, for hours at a time.
Yes. All the males in a population sing the same song, and when it changes, all the singers adopt the change through social learning.
NOAA says some populations migrate 5,000 miles between tropical breeding grounds and colder feeding grounds, one of the longest migrations of any mammal.
08Sources
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