Humpback whales change tune to attract mates

Humpback whales off the coast of Australia have given up an old song of theirs and picked up a new one from visiting whales, according to researchers     AUDIO Listen to a humpback whale song 370/17.02 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

December 27, 2000
Web posted at: 12:35 PM EST (1735 GMT)

From Elina Fuhrman
CNN Correspondent

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Male humpback whales off the East Coast of Australia have been singing a different song in recent years. Researchers speculate that they gave up their old tune in favor of one they learned from a group of visiting Indian Ocean humpbacks, all to attract females.

"The humpback song on the East Coast changed, but it didn't change by an evolutionary process. It changed by the introduction of a brand new, novel song," said Michael Noad, a whale researcher at the Marine Mammal Research Center at Sydney University.

"And that song was taken up by all the East Coast singers. So it was quite a revolution within their culture, rather than an evolution."

Likely the most vocal of whales, humpbacks sing some of the longest and most complex songs in the animal world. Stringing together moans, cries, groans, chirps, trills and snores, they create melodies that last from five to 35 minutes.

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Humpbacks live in all the major oceans. The song patterns of each population are quite distinctive. All the males in a population sing the same song. Usually it evolves piecemeal over time, with the singers all incorporating the same changes in their musical repertoire.

Between 1995 and 1998, Marine Research Center scientists analyzed more than 1,000 hours of humpback songs. The recordings contained a surprise.

"By the end of 1997, the old song was virtually extinct. It had just about disappeared completely. And in 1998 when we came back to record again, there was nothing but a new song. It had taken over completely."

A researcher prepares a recording device to monitor whale songs in the water off Australia

One hypothesis is that the new song, the one sung by the Indian Ocean whales, proved more successful in attracting the opposite sex. So the East Coast whales changed accordingly, singing the new tune.

The fifth-largest of the great whales, humpbacks can reach 50 feet (15.2 m) in length and 50 tons in weight. Mature males of the grayish-black species are slightly smaller than the female.

Compared to other whales, humpbacks have rather long pectoral fins, or flippers. Their name is a reference to how their backs arch out of the water when they start a steep dive.

Their worldwide population was more than 100,000 before the beginning of commercial whaling. The species, now protected worldwide, has an estimated population of 10,000.

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The University of Sydney
  • Marine Science

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