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Whale Song Mystery Solved by Scientists and Can AI Helps Scientists Speak With Them?

Scientists have worked out how some of the largest whales in the ocean produce their haunting and complex songs.

BBC 26 FEB 2024

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Humpback whale breaching near Bering Island, Kamchatka, Russia

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Humpbacks and other baleen whales have evolved a specialised "voice box" that enables them to sing underwater.

The discovery, published in the journal Nature, has also revealed why the noise we make in the ocean is so disruptive for these ocean giants.

Whale song is restricted to a narrow frequency that overlaps with the noise produced by ships.

"Sound is absolutely crucial for their survival, because it's the only way they can find each other to mate in the ocean," explained Prof Coen Elemans, of the University of Southern Denmark, who led the study.

"[These are some] of the most enigmatic animals that ever lived on the planet," he told BBC News. "They are amongst the biggest animals, they're smart and they're highly social."

Baleen whales are a group of 14 species, including the blue, humpback, right, minke and gray whale. Instead of teeth, the animals have plates of what is called baleen, through which they sieve huge mouthfuls of tiny creatures from the water.

Exactly how they produce complex, often haunting songs has been a mystery until now. Prof Elemans said it was "super-exciting" to have figured it out.

He and his colleagues carried out experiments using larynxes, or "voice boxes", that had been carefully removed from three carcasses of stranded whales - a minke, a humpback and a sei whale. They then blew air through the massive structures to produce the sound.

In humans, our voices come from vibrations when air passes over structures called vocal folds in our throat. Baleen whales, instead, have a large U-shaped structure with a cushion of fat at the top of the larynx.

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This vocal anatomy allows the animals to sing by recycling air, and it prevents water from being inhaled.

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