New research suggest that the songs of blue whales are becoming deeper. In in 1962, John Hildebrand found that the frequency of call was around 22Hz, below the range of our hearing, but last year had decreased to 15Hz. Hildebrand explains that frequency comes at a tradeoff with volume. He suggests the choice is conscious between a really loud song or one that will go really deep.
Why the change?
As their numbers have slowly increased after the devastation caused by whaling, they are having to communicate over smaller distances so their songs don’t need to be as loud and they can make them deeper.
Also of interest is that regional dialects in whale song exist. Those in the southern oceans tend to have a bit of twang and slower song, peppered with ya’ll, than there northern counterparts.
Of course all this discussion of Blues Whale got me thinking about one of my favorite all times bluesmen, John Lee Hooker. A little Tupelo below the fold.
This is a good thing, as the higher-frequency whale distress call would have eventually (somehow) penetrated the vacuum of space and beckoned their angry extra-terrestrial brethren to earth, forcing the crew of the USS Enterprise to travel back to the 80s for a lame schtick about “nuclear wessels.”
Great.
First the blues brothers and now this.
How many more times will this art form be stolen?
Somebody decided to sing, or rather make music “with” the whales, actually humpbacks, but maybe you care to listen as well?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7468761.stm
Oh,oh: sorry! should have read the article you refer to first, as it relates also the story about the humpback jamming!