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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-did-Dorry-learn-whale? dept.

Humpback whales learn songs in segments – like the verses of a human song – and can remix them, a new study involving University of Queensland research has found.

The study featured data from Associate Professor Michael Noad of the UQ School of Veterinary Science's Cetacean Ecology and Acoustics Laboratory (CEAL).

Research indicated that whale songs appeared to be learnt a similar way to how humans acquire language skills, or a bird learns its warble.

"All the males in a population sing the same complex song, but the pattern of song changes with time, sometimes quite rapidly, across the population," Dr Noad said.

"Learning new songs is a form of what's known as 'social learning', which is where individual animals learn behaviours from each other rather than having them passed on from one generation to another genetically.

"Although we know that whales change their songs over time, we don't know about how they learn the new songs.

"The rate of change though shows that they are constantly learning and updating their songs rapidly."

Yes, whales sing, but they only sing ska...


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:25AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:25AM (#544491)

    A whale is a whale, so swell, so swell,
    And no one can talk to a whale so well,
    It would be hell, unless the whale, is the famous Mr. Hale.

    Go right to the mail and write the whale,
    He'll give you the answer that you'll think is swell.
    He's always on a steady trail.
    Talk to Mr. Hale.