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...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:38AM (3 children)
takyon! Just because a Soylentil calls you out on really bad ed choices, that does not mean you mod them down! And none of your Posse (takyon has a posse?) should mod down, either. We who are Soylentils, we the few, the proud, the extraordinately informed, expect more of you, our editors. Try to live up to the impossible standard you have been given. An attempt would be appreciated.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:48PM (2 children)
Why is Marine Biology a bad choice of topics? I don't get it....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:38AM (1 child)
Not per se. It is just that the real title was "Whales learn songs more like humans than previously thought."
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:51PM
Oh, that's actually pretty funny!
A bit more context next time...