Читать книгу Extreme Nature - Mark Carwardine - Страница 18

NAME	humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae
LOCATION	oceans worldwide
ABILITY	singing the longest and most complex songs in the animal kingdom

© Flip Nicklin/Minden Pictures/FLPA

Drop a hydrophone into the water in an area where humpback whales are breeding and you may hear a baffling medley of moans, groans, roars, snores, squeaks and whistles. These are the hauntingly beautiful sounds made by male humpbacks, which are famous for singing the longest and most complex of animal songs. Since most singing takes place at the breeding grounds, it is probably used to woo females and to warn away rival males – but the songs may also have more subtle meanings and nuances that we do not yet understand.

A song can last for as long as half an hour, and as soon as the whale has finished, it often goes back to the beginning and sings it all over again. Each song consists of several main components, or phrases, which are always sung in the same order and repeated a number of times, but are forever being refined and improved. All the humpbacks in one area sing broadly the same song, incorporating each other’s improvisations as they go along. This means that the song heard one day is different from the one being heard several months later and, in this way, the entire composition changes over a period of several years.

Meanwhile, humpback whales in other oceans sing very different compositions. They probably all croon about the same trials and tribulations in life, but the differences are so distinctive that experts can tell where a whale was recorded simply by listening to the intricacies of its own special song.