[wordup] whale song

[Adam Shand]

From: http://www.sino-russian.org/archives/000180.shtml
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3664891.stm

whale song

i've mentioned before how much i love carl sagan's Cosmos series. 
probably my favorite chapter is the one devoted to sea, how it pertains 
to life on earth, and the amazing phenomenon of whale song.

Whales have an intricate language of songs. there are songs they sing 
every season, songs that are built on like serial novels. A whale may 
sing a certain phrase one year, and then the next year sing that phrase 
exactly the same way, with an added couple notes. as their life goes 
on, the song becomes longer and longer like some historical ballad.

They've even recorded an instance of a whale stopping its song 
mid-phrase and migrating south for the season, then returning the next 
year and picking the song back up exactly where it left off. we don't 
really understand whale's brains and how their memory works yet, but we 
do know that whale song serves as a sort of communication over long 
distances, due to a layer of cold water deep down in the ocean that 
carries the vibrations of the whale song for hundreds of miles. whales 
used to have the entire ocean for their sonic use, and would sing songs 
back and forth across great distances.

  now, unfortunately, humans sail gigantic barges across the sea that 
rumble low-frequency engine noise and drown out any other sounds in 
their vicinity. The multiplication of supply lines across the seas mean 
that we've been hemming whales into tinier and tinier areas where they 
can communicate effectively.

Which brings me to the entire point of this long post with a single 
link: I'm very heartened to read that orca whales are attempting to 
compensate for this by singing louder to be heard over the din of large 
boats. Like ritchey, i'm very fascinated by the sea (except maybe 
without the deep-seated fear of entering it), and how little we know 
about it. it's the source of all life, and mostly it seems like we 
treat it like a dumping ground. Whales and dolphins are smart 
motherfuckers. can you imagine if they had evolved opposable thumbs and 
the ability to build tools? the simpsons were probably right, they'd 
rise up and kick the crap out of us.

Posted by wise at April 29, 2004 09:26 AM