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Study Finds Whales Sing for up to 16 Hours Non-Stop While Diving
The findings could help scientists infer whale depth from song alone and better track how noise and shipping affect behavior, researchers said.
- Researchers recently discovered a link between humpback whale song structure and dive cycles, publishing findings in the journal Current Biology. Specific song themes align consistently with different portions of a whale's dive.
- To collect data, scientists attached suction-cup recording tags to 16 humpback whales off the coast of Maui over a six-year period from 2018 to 2024. These devices captured underwater sounds and movement before detaching.
- Zeh noted that song variation near a whale's deepest points may be driven by sexual selection. "This gives us direction for which parts of the song to investigate," Zeh said, contrasting these with themes constrained by oxygen management.
- Understanding the song-movement connection allows researchers to infer whale depth from acoustic recordings alone, establishing behavioral baselines essential for detecting disturbance from human activity like shipping traffic or ocean noise.
- Whether these patterns hold for humpback populations outside Hawaii remains an open question, according to Zeh. She noted documented differences in song evolution raise the possibility that different populations experience different pressures on song structure.
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Humpback whales match song themes to dive phases, tags reveal
For male humpback whales, singing is serious business. Their haunting, complex songs can last for hours and travel for miles underwater, playing a central role in reproduction during the winter breeding season. But despite decades of research into what these songs sound like, scientists have had far less insight into what the whales are physically doing while they sing.
·Douglas, United Kingdom
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Imagine that every year, from day to day, an entire country decides to abandon its mother tongue to adopt another language, learned from neighbors living thousands of miles away. Assured among humans, however, this scenario is the daily reality of humpback whales. For a long time, it was thought that the song of [...] More
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