What do whales sing? What do humpback whales sing about? A researcher uses a hydrophone to listen to the sounds made by a humpback whale

Which animal songs are the loudest and most melodious? Most people, if you ask them this question, will answer without hesitation - of course, bird songs! However, this opinion can be challenged. The songs of not only birds, but also those of the inhabitants of the sea - cetaceans - are extremely sonorous and varied. And the palm among them, of course, is held by humpback whales.

humpbacks(Megaptera novaeangliae) belong to the suborder of baleen whales, the family of minke whales ( Balaenopteridae). These are large whales - their body length can reach 17–19 m, of which almost a third is the huge head. The dorsal fin is low, thick and rather resembles a small hump - hence the name “humpback whale”, “humpback whale”. But the pelvic fins of this whale are very impressive - 3–4 m in length, with bumpy, thickened anterior edges. On the head of the humpback whale, along the lower jaw, there are skin growths the size of half an orange, and on the front edge of the lower jaw there is a central growth with a diameter of up to 30 cm. The same growths are located on the upper part of the head. Each of them, as a rule, grows one hair.

Like other minke whales, longitudinal folds of skin stretch along the throat and chest of the humpback whale. There are few of them, from 12 to 36, and they are wider and deeper than those of other members of the family. In each half of the upper jaw there are from 270 to 400 large (up to a meter long!) plates of whalebone - the filtering apparatus. The humpback fish feeds mainly on small fish (capelin and greenling) and crustaceans, but does not disdain cephalopods.

This whale swims quite slowly - at a speed of about 10 km/h, and only when frightened can it move twice as fast. A humpback whale usually stays under water for 5–6 minutes, or at most half an hour. A very interesting feature of this whale is its love for acrobatic jumps - huge animals perform somersaults in the air, jumping out of the water, often several times in a row.

Mating displays among humpback whales can occur throughout the year, but usually occur in winter. Like many other baleen whales, humpback whales in the summer rush to cold waters, which are very rich in food at this time, and in the winter they migrate closer to the equator in order to give birth to offspring in warm waters. The female humpback whale carries the baby for about 12 months. The cub is born large - up to 4-4.6 m in length - and feeds on mother's milk for 6-10 months. Humpback whales reach sexual maturity at the age of 5 years, but, as a rule, they begin to reproduce no earlier than 8 or even 15 years of age. The known lifespan for males is 48 years, and for females - 38 years.

There are 9 herds of these animals in the World Ocean. Two of them live in the North Atlantic and migrate respectively from Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya to the Cape Verde Islands and from Greenland and Iceland to the Caribbean Sea. There are also two herds of humpback whales in the North Pacific Ocean, moving from the Chukchi and Okhotsk Seas south along the Asian or American coasts. In Russian waters, humpback whales can be found in the Bering Strait and Pacific seas, as well as in the Barents Sea.

Another five herds of humpback whales live in the Southern Hemisphere and migrate from Antarctic waters, respectively, to the western coast of South America, the eastern coast of America and western Africa, the eastern coast of Africa and Madagascar, the western coast of Australia and the eastern coast of Australia, New Zealand and the islands Polynesia. Representatives of different herds do not communicate with each other during the breeding season, but, apparently, can sometimes meet in summer feeding areas.

Humpback whales, like other baleen whales, were the object of active fishing, so that already at the beginning of the 20th century. their number has greatly decreased. In the North Atlantic, fishing for these whales has been banned since 1955, in the South Atlantic since 1964, and in the North Pacific since 1966. Now the numbers of these whales have stabilized somewhat.

Having become acquainted with the main features of the biology of humpback whales, let us now move on to the main topic of our article - their famous songs. Sounds – and quite loud ones – are made by almost all cetaceans, because one of the important ways of orientation of these mammals is echolocation. Whales also actively use sounds to communicate with each other, and some of them are very talkative. The trills of belugas, nicknamed sea canaries, and the conversations of dolphins are widely known. Research has shown that representatives of the right whale family also actively communicate using sounds ( Balaenidae), For example bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus). But humpback whales, of course, are the brightest singers. Their singing can be surprisingly melodic and resembles the sound of a variety of musical instruments: oboe, clarinet, bagpipes. And if the recording of the voice of a humpback whale is played at a much higher speed, we will hear the typical song of a bird. These animals can also make other sounds - mournful sobs, roars, or even mouse squeaks.

By the way, the voices of whales can be heard very far underwater - acousticians have shown that in the thickness of sea water at a depth of about 1 km there are so-called sound channels through which sound can travel thousands of kilometers! Apparently, whales are aware of the existence of these channels and use them to communicate and transmit information.

It is not known for certain when people first noticed the loud songs of humpback whales. But scientists began to study them only after the underwater microphone (hydrophone) was invented. The earliest recordings of the songs of these whales date back to the early 1950s, and their detailed descriptions by researchers R. Payne and S. McVay appeared even later - in the early 1970s. Then biologists found that in the complex songs of humpback whales, individual themes and phrases can be distinguished, repeated at certain intervals. The length of each song ranges from 7 to 15 minutes and depends on how many such phrases and themes are included in it for each whale. When the song is finished, the whale usually starts it again, repeating all the phrases in the same sequence.

A researcher using a hydrophone listens to sounds
humpback whale sounds

The songs that humpback whales sing during mating are especially beautiful and loud. And what’s interesting is that at the beginning of the breeding season, all males hum a similar melody, which gradually changes over time and by the end of winter becomes completely different. When humpbacks return to their breeding grounds a year later, they begin their vocal exercises with the theme they “left off” at the end of the last season, and again after a few months the song changes. Sometimes over the course of 2-3 years the song does not change very much, and sometimes it changes beyond recognition.

But why do whales need their song to constantly change? American researcher Sel Sergio suggested that in conditions when all the males of the population hum the same thing, the females may, simply put, get a little bored. And then those suitors who manage to introduce something new into their singing and thus “rise above the crowd” will perhaps enjoy great success. At the same time, the new melody should not differ too much from the old one - otherwise it may lose its meaning, turning from a love serenade into something not at all attractive to females.

In 1996, Australian researcher Michael Noad began studying the songs of humpback whales. He listened to whales from a population breeding off the eastern coast of Australia. At first everything went fine. All 82 males of the herd chanted approximately the same thing, with minor variations. But then, towards the end of the season, Noad recorded the songs of two individuals, which were radically different from the singing of the others. At first he even decided that these two were simply sick with something...

But when the researcher continued his observations six months later, he discovered that already a third of the males who returned from summer feeding sang this newest song. True, the remaining two-thirds continued to sing the old one - but not for long. By the end of the season, almost all the whales had mastered the new tune. And, returning for the third year, they sang only this. Before this, biologists had not even imagined that humpback whales of the same population could sing two different songs at the same time. And that the song of whales can change not gradually, but dramatically.

However, the surprises did not end there. When analyzing recordings of songs of humpback whales breeding off the opposite, western coast of Australia, made by other scientists in 1996, it turned out that that year they all sang a song very similar to the one that two “sick people” sang in the east at the end of this season » whale. How did they get the new melody? During the breeding season, the eastern and western herds are completely isolated, but some of the individuals may possibly change their “registration” during summer feeding off the Antarctic coast. Biochemical studies have shown that gene mixing does occur between populations, although very little.

But why did the whales living off the east coast so quickly adopt a new song introduced by strangers, or perhaps simply heard while feeding? Perhaps this phenomenon is akin to what is called fashion in human society? Let's remember: first a single person, dressed unusually, comes out onto the street. It looks eccentric and surprises other people. But then more and more people start dressing this way. And quite quickly the new style begins to be considered normal and ceases to cause surprise. On the contrary, people dressed differently now cause bewilderment... It can be assumed that the whales also picked up the new song because they simply liked it - either the performers themselves, or, more importantly, the female listeners who, as in human society , are trendsetters... Humpback whale sightings continue. Perhaps in the future we will learn about new, as yet unknown, functions of the songs of these animals, and perhaps over time we will be able to understand their relationships with each other, understand their needs and aspirations.

Literature

Wuersig B. Behavior of baleen whales. // In the world of science. 1988. No. 6.

Morozov V. Interesting bioacoustics. – M: Knowledge, 1983.

Fauna of the world. Mammals. – M: Agropromizdat, 1990.

Noad. M. Singing giants change their tune. // Nature Australia. 2002. V. 27. No. 4.

Do whales sing?

Whales are the only mammal other than humans that... sing. Many of them make low cooing sounds, and humpback and right whales sing “songs” - a series of different sounds repeated in a certain sequence. The songs of whales are so clear, the sounds are so organized, as if some composer had worked here. The shortest "aria" lasts six minutes, the longest - about half an hour. Sometimes the soloist performs his encore number for hours, stopping only to refresh the air supply in his lungs. The meaning of the Sirens of the Deep singing is not yet known, but since whales sing almost exclusively during the breeding season, it can be assumed that singing serves some function in their family life. At first it was believed that only males sing, but there is evidence that females sing songs to their babies.

The herd's "repertoire" is constantly changing. Perhaps “songs” serve for more complex communication. In any case, somehow all the whales are aware of the slightest changes in the situation. How will they know about this? And anyway, how do they sing if they don’t have vocal cords?

However, many scientists are now inclined to believe that The sound-reproducing system of whales is located in the front of the head. These are channels, cavities, valves and pipes located in the bone bed of the skull behind the fat pad, which serves as a kind of lens that guides and amplifies the acoustic beam.

Whale songs are sounds made by cetaceans to communicate. The word "songs" is used to emphasize the repetitive and melodic nature of sounds, reminiscent of human singing.

Songs vary among different populations and may gradually change throughout the mating season; whales perform them both alone and in chorus. In general, it is unknown whether whale songs serve to attract females or to scare away other males and establish a hierarchy between them - as observed, songs often end in conflicts with other males.

A complex communication system is necessary for these sea giants to communicate over significant distances. Thus, the voice of a blue whale carries over 500 km in the water, and the songs of the fin whale also cover enormous distances. Humpback whales sing as they travel from their Antarctic feeding grounds to the areas where they will breed.

All animals use natural underwater enhancers. Sound waves can travel best at a depth of 1 kilometer, since it is at this level that the decreasing temperature and high pressure form a kind of channel. The sounds emitted into this “tunnel” can travel hundreds of kilometers.

One day, bioacoustics and machine learning specialist from the University of Toulon, Hervé Gloten, tried to listen to the “silence of the ocean.” The ocean turned out to be far from silent, the sea was even “noisier”, and there was simply nowhere to escape from the chattering of the river inhabitants. This topic fascinated the researcher so much that he founded the international research project SABIOD (Scaled Acoustic BIODiversity platform). For 15 years now, Herve and his team have been studying the voices of underwater inhabitants and trying to understand how they live, what topics they communicate about, and also how people influence their world.

Cat and mouse in the depths

For marine life, sound is both a way of communication and a means of orientation in space. They find their way by analyzing the reflection of sound from different objects. They also find other animals - both their relatives and prey, says Hervé Gloten.

Echolocation in dolphins: this is how dolphins navigate in space using sounds. Recorded by Hervé Gloten's team in Port-Cros National Park (Port-Cros - Côte d'Azur, France)

— Spearfishing is like a game of cat and mouse. The task of sperm whales and other hunters is to understand where the prey is without giving away their location. As a rule, the prey simply does not have enough time to get its bearings. But she is trying to intercept the sound signal that the whale sends. You could say that the prey becomes an underwater hacker - intercepting information that is not intended for it. This is her only chance for salvation.

What do whales sing about?

By the nature of the sounds, scientists can determine what the inhabitants of the depths are doing: hunting, communicating, looking for a mate, or caring for cubs. Scientists can identify each animal and understand who it communicates with and what it does. This new scientific direction is “ethoacoustics”, that is, the study of the behavior of an animal by the sounds it makes.

Professor Gloten's team is compiling dictionaries of the “whale” language. They have already identified about 70 different types of sounds that whales make in different situations. Unsurprisingly, call signs vary depending on the species, but even within the same species there are different “dialects.” For example, Chilean sperm whales do not sound exactly like Mediterranean sperm whales, but you can always understand that it is a sperm whale, the researcher assures.

The so-called “song” of the humpback whale. Recorded in the Indian Ocean

The SABIOD team suggests that sperm whales can even “touch” each other using sounds. The range of sounds they make and detect is much wider than that of humans. Sperm whales living in the same group send each other very strong and low-frequency sounds that penetrate their tissues. For humans this is unpleasant (or at least unusual), but sperm whales express warm feelings to each other in this way.

Mirror in the thicket

Hervé Gloten and his colleagues record the sounds of a wide variety of fauna, from insects to huge blue whales. But underwater inhabitants remain the professor’s favorite “performers.”

- Mostly, cetaceans were studied visually - filmed underwater or observed as they came to the surface. And we rely on the tool that they themselves use - sound.

For recording, the researchers use a special acoustic system, Jason, which they developed themselves. Before the experiment begins, it is set up so that sounds of a certain frequency are recorded - this way you can learn about the life of a certain species, for example, sperm whales or Amazonian dolphins. The device also has a number of special devices, such as several microphones spaced apart in space, which provide a three-dimensional “picture”, and a large hard drive (“Jason” can work autonomously in different modes for up to 2 years, although recording is usually carried out for 3 months).

— The hydrophone should become part of the landscape for animals. When we first drop “Jason,” many animals first get to know him and play with him. Especially dolphins.

Imagine that you are walking through the forest with a torch, and somewhere between the trees there is a mirror hidden. It reflects the light of your torch - of course it will attract your attention. For a dolphin, a hydrophone is the same as a mirror, only it reflects sound, not light. For the first twenty minutes, the hydrophone becomes a center of attraction, dolphins swim around it, can taste it, but rarely break it. And when they're sure it's not an animal, they leave the hydrophone alone.

However, Herve adds, there have been cases when such games backfired on the equipment. Once a jungle study had to be paused because a tapir ate the microphone, and another time a dolphin attacked a hydrophone and turned all the smart stuff into mush.

Too much noise

Despite such an active life of underwater inhabitants, the ocean is a calm place, unlike rivers.

— One of our current projects is related to studying the life of river dolphins and other inhabitants of the Amazon. There we receive terabytes of sound recordings in a week. It takes about 3 months to collect the same volume in the Mediterranean Sea.

Silence is very important for the active life of cetaceans. But today there are fewer and fewer truly quiet seas, mainly due to the development of water transport.

Imagine that you are constantly in a nightclub with loud music - in such conditions it is difficult to have a heart-to-heart conversation. In addition, extraneous noise (for example, the sound of a motor boat or windmill) interferes with cetaceans' ability to navigate and hunt.

— Surprisingly, there are still large whales and dolphins in the Mediterranean Sea. Although they used to be better here. In principle, cetaceans are not found in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of France - it is too shallow there. But other animals there are strongly affected by the traffic of sea vessels and wind energy generators located in the water. They are very frightening to the local fauna, as they create infrasounds that travel well through the water.

I observed the best conditions for cetaceans in Arctic and Antarctic waters. When I first started listening in the area where the humpback whales we were exploring were supposed to live, I thought there was something wrong with the system. There was nothing audible, no extraneous noise. Then suddenly I heard the clicks of whales and realized that there was nothing wrong with the system.

In the photo: Herve Gloten (left)

Compromise

To conserve cetaceans in “densely populated” seas such as the Mediterranean, Hervé’s research is very important. All animals live in a certain territory and use more or less the same routes. One of the professor's ideas is to change the courses of large ships so that they do not collide with whales.

A legal speed limit for motor boats would also help preserve a comfortable habitat for cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea.

Sounds around us

Once the audio is recorded, the fun begins—big data processing. And this is not only the compilation of “dictionaries”. Thanks to surround sound, scientists can create a three-dimensional model of the underwater area they were exploring and reconstruct the trajectories along which the animals moved.

The sound recording and analysis system developed by scientists can be used not only to study the world hidden from view. It can also come in handy in city life. The same principle can be used to map the movement of cars in a city, track the movement of drones in the sky, or prevent bird collisions with planes over airfields.

Life in the ocean is different from life on land. Dive underwater and try to smell an orange or see something more than a meter away from you. Animals that live in water must have developed special ways of perceiving the world, different from sight and smell. One of these methods was sound. Whales have a whole range of sounds that they use both to communicate and find their way in the dark depths. But only certain species of whales “sing.”

Whales are divided into two groups depending on the way they feed: toothed whales and baleen whales.

Toothed whales are more aggressive. These include sperm whales, dolphins and killer whales. These whales feed like tigers in the jungle, hunting and pursuing prey (from small fish to octopuses and sea lions). They swallow everything they catch whole.

Outwardly “better-mannered” baleen whales feed by swimming through the water with their mouths open and sucking in small plants and animals along with the water. They filter water with planktonic mollusks, crustaceans and small fish through special horny plates. There are from 360 to 800 of them in the upper jaw, they are from 20 to 450 cm long and are called whalebone. The inner edge and top of each plate are split into thin and long bristles, forming a kind of thick sieve. Baleen whales include enormous blue whales and singing humpback whales.

The sea is dark in color even during the day, and many toothed whales travel and hunt at night. How do they do it? Just like a bat flying in the dead of night, some whales make sounds and then pick up their echoes. These sounds are similar to clicks or whistles. When a sound wave encounters an obstacle in its path, such as a rock or fish, it is reflected back.

Ordinary ears cannot help underwater. Sound waves are vibrations in the air that cause the eardrum to move. And the wave propagating in the water causes the entire skull to vibrate. Therefore, when whales returned to the ocean in ancient times, their now useless ear canals narrowed to the size of the eye of a needle. However, whales do have eardrums, but sound travels to them along a completely different route, passing from the jaw bone or forehead through a layer of fat to the eardrums.

In addition to clicking their jaws (which resemble a creaking door), toothed whales use whistles and trills to communicate. (The beluga whale, which is a toothed whale, produces so many trills that it is called the sea canary.) Whales also make sounds by striking their caudal fin (the two plates of their tail). In some whales, these sounds are so loud that they resemble the sound of a jackhammer.

Baleen whales click, chirp, and whistle, just like toothed whales. But they also make low-pitched moans. Humpback whales make similar sounds while chasing prey, and they can turn into a “song” and last more than an hour. Scientists call these "songs" because they have rhythm, structure, and repeated phrases (like choruses or refrains), and only humpback whales "sing."

Scientists who recorded and analyzed these “songs” say that if they were broken down into sounds and a language was made from these sounds, then some “songs” would contain information no less than a small book. Some sounds are too low for the human ear to hear, and others need to be played at a very slow tempo for us to understand them. The “song” itself is the same for whales from different parts of the ocean, but the number of phrases for each individual is individual. Whales change their “songs” depending on the season. No one knows why whales sing or what their “songs” mean. It has been suggested that the “songs” help males establish the boundaries of their possessions or are part of the mating ritual. But these are just human interpretations of a world of whales that we may not understand at all.

• As you know, about 100 species of whales live on our Earth and they are divided into baleen and toothed, and they differ only in that baleen do not have teeth, while toothed ones do.
• Baleen whales are among the least studied because... They spend only 20% of their time at the surface of the water, and we can only guess what they do in the depths of the water element.
• I will not expand on how they are structured, what they eat and how they reproduce, because... the conversation will be about something completely different - how and what whales sing about.
• Whales are highly developed animals and this is evident from their ability to maintain constant contact with each other, exchange information, and give each other commands. Probably, for whales, the “words” of their language can be some kind of posture, movement, but the main means of communication is sound signals.
• With the help of sounds, contact is maintained not only between the calf and the mother, between the male and the female, between members of the community, but also with other whales located at a distance of tens and even hundreds of kilometers from each other.
• The fact is that sounds travel much faster in water than in air. If whales did not have this ability, many species, like blue whales, which were once intensively exterminated by humans, would be doomed to inevitable extinction.
• There are so few of them left that chance meetings of a male and a female in the vast ocean are completely unlikely, and only thanks to sound signals are the animals able to find each other, so there is still hope that the whales will be saved.
• 
  
• And yet, what do whales sing about?
• Right whales use six types of tones, and the most common are low sounds that quickly increase in pitch. They are usually used as a call to gather together.
• Sounds whose pitch decreases quickly are designed to communicate over distances of several kilometers.
• Whales make a variety of sounds, including those reminiscent of loud cries and even growls, when they gather together.
• If animals are irritated by something, they puff, and the slap of their fins on the water means anxiety or a showdown between themselves.
• When the female dives into the depths and remains to hunt, the cub is on the surface, but maintains constant contact with the mother, exchanging one or two sounds from time to time.
• Male humpback whales perform entire serenades during the mating season. Only adults and strong “guys” sing.
• Their song is a demonstration of their own power, and the goal is to attract the attention of a lady.
• 
  
• The serenade can be heard for many kilometers. When two males are engaged in vocal exercises, the rivals do not try to outsing each other, but if someone gets bored of someone, the more aggressive one gets closer to the competitor and forces him to shut up.
• How they sort things out down there, no one knows yet.
• The song of humpback whales sounds quite melodious. It consists of individual themes and musical phrases, which are repeated several times at regular intervals in a strictly defined sequence, and can last as long as half an hour.
• The sounds that gray whales make in shallow waters in winter have been well studied. Sighs, gurgling, knocking are common among them, but moans are especially common.
• Animals moan day and night, when they swim alone or in packs, and the most talkative ones can produce up to 50 moans per hour.
• Moans are very low sounds of great force and last about two seconds. The purpose for which whales make these sounds is still unclear.
• Perhaps they are intended for communication or this is a reaction to some external influences, to the noise of a nearby surf or a distant storm.
• Finally, moans may turn out to be just an expression of love longing, because this is the time of love, the time of finding a girlfriend and winning her heart. Well, how can you not groan here?!
• And only they know what whales sing about.