Why do whales sing. What are the whales singing about? French researcher - about studying the "language" of whales and dolphins

One day, Hervé Gloten, a bioacoustics and machine learning specialist at the University of Toulon, tried to listen to the "silence of the ocean." The ocean turned out to be not at all silent, the sea was even "noisier", and there was simply nowhere to go from the chatter of the inhabitants of the rivers. The researcher was so fascinated by this topic that he founded the international research project SABIOD (Scaled Acoustic BIODiversity platform). For 15 years, Herve and his team have been researching the voices of underwater inhabitants and trying to understand how they live, what topics they talk about, and also how humans affect their world.

Cat and mouse at depth

For marine life, sound is both a method of communication and a means of orientation in space. They find their way by analyzing the reflection of sound from different objects. They also find other animals - both their relatives and prey, says Herve Gloten.

Echolocation in dolphins: this is how dolphins navigate in space using sounds. Recorded by Hervé Gloten's team in the Port-Cros National Park (Port-Cros - Cote d'Azur, France)

- Spearfishing is like a cat and mouse game. The task of sperm whales and other hunters is to understand where the prey is, and not give away their location. As a rule, prey simply does not have enough time to navigate. But she tries to intercept the sound signal that the whale is sending. We can say that the prey becomes an underwater hacker - it intercepts information that is not intended for it. This is her only chance for salvation.

What are the whales singing about?

By the nature of the sounds, scientists can determine what the inhabitants of the depths are doing: they hunt, communicate, look for a mate or look after their cubs. Scientists can identify each animal and understand who it communicates with and what it does. This new scientific direction is "ethoacoustics", that is, the study of the behavior of an animal by the sounds it emits.

Professor Gloten's team compiles Whale dictionaries. They have already identified about 70 different types of sounds that whales make in different situations. Not surprisingly, callsigns vary from species to species, but even within the same species there are different “dialects”. For example, Chilean sperm whales do not sound exactly like Mediterranean ones, but you can always understand that this is a sperm whale, the researcher assures.

The so-called "song" of the humpback whale. Recorded in the Indian Ocean

The SABIOD team suggests that sperm whales can even "touch" each other with sounds. The spectrum of sounds that they emit and capture is much wider than that of humans. Sperm whales living in the same group send very strong and low-frequency sounds to each other, which penetrate their tissues. For a person, this is unpleasant (or, at least, unusual), but sperm whales in this way express warm feelings to each other.

Mirror in the thicket

Hervé Gloten and his colleagues record the sounds of a wide variety of fauna, from insects to huge blue whales. But the underwater inhabitants remain the professor's favorite "performers".

- Basically, cetaceans were examined visually - they were filmed under water or watched as they come to the surface. And we rely on the instrument that they themselves use - the sound.

For recording, the researchers use a special Jason speaker system, which they developed themselves. Before starting the experiment, it is tuned so that sounds of a certain frequency are recorded - this way you can learn about the life of a certain species, for example, sperm whales or Amazonian dolphins. The device has a number of special devices, such as several spaced microphones, which give a three-dimensional "picture", and a large hard disk ("Jason" can work autonomously in different modes for up to 2 years, although usually the recording is carried out for 3 months).

- The hydrophone should be part of the animal landscape. When we just put "Jason" down, many animals first get to know and play with it. Especially dolphins.

Imagine that you are walking with a torch through the forest, and somewhere between the trees there is a mirror. It reflects the light of your torch - of course, it will grab your attention. For a dolphin, a hydrophone is the same mirror, only it reflects not light, but sound. For the first twenty minutes, the hydrophone becomes the center of gravity, dolphins swim around it, they can taste it, but rarely break. And when they make sure it's not an animal, they leave the hydrophone alone.

However, Hervé adds, there have been cases when such games came out sideways for equipment. Once the research in the jungle had to be paused because the tapir ate the microphone, and another time the dolphin attacked the hydrophone and turned all the clever stuffing into mush.

Too much noise

Despite such an active life of underwater inhabitants, the ocean is a calm place, unlike rivers.

- One of our ongoing projects is related to the study of the life of river dolphins and other inhabitants of the Amazon. There we get terabytes of sound recordings per week. It takes about 3 months to collect the same amount in the Mediterranean.

Silence is very important for the active life of cetaceans. But today there are less and less truly quiet seas - mainly due to the development of water transport.

Imagine that you are constantly in a nightclub with loud music - in such conditions it is difficult to have a heart-to-heart talk. In addition, extraneous noises (for example, the sound of a motor boat or a windmill) interfere with cetaceans to navigate and hunt.

“Surprisingly, there are still large whales and dolphins in the Mediterranean. Although they used to be better here. In the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of France, cetaceans, in principle, are not found - it is too shallow there. But other animals there are strongly affected by the traffic of sea vessels, and the generators of wind energy, which are located in the water. They scare the local fauna very much, as they create infrasounds that perfectly spread through the water.

I have seen the best conditions for cetaceans in the Arctic and Antarctic waters. When I first started listening in the area where the humpback whales we were researching were supposed to live, I thought there was something wrong with the system. There was nothing to be heard, no extraneous noise. Then, all of a sudden, I heard the clicks of whales and realized that everything was in order with the system.

In the photo: Herve Gloten (left)

Compromise

To preserve cetaceans in such "densely populated" seas as the Mediterranean, Herve's research is essential. All animals live in a certain area and use more or less the same routes. One of the professor's ideas is to change the course of large ships so that they do not collide with whales.

Legislative speed limits for motor boats would also help maintain a comfortable habitat for Mediterranean cetaceans.

Sounds around us

Once the sound is recorded, the fun begins - big data processing. And this is not only the compilation of "dictionaries". Thanks to the "surround" sound, scientists can create a three-dimensional model of the underwater area that they have explored and reconstruct the trajectories along which the animals moved.

The system for recording and analyzing sound, developed by scientists, can be used not only for studying the world hidden from the eyes. In city life, it can also come in handy. The same principle can be used to map the movement of cars in a city, track the movement of drones in the sky, or prevent birds from colliding with planes over airfields.

• As you know, about 100 species of whales live on our Earth and they are divided into baleen and toothed, and differ only in that the baleen have no teeth, while the toothed ones do.
• Baleen whales are among the least studied because spend at the surface of the water only 20% of their time, and what they do in the depths of the water element, we can only guess.
• I will not expand on how they work, what they eat and how they reproduce, because the conversation will be about something completely different - how and what the whales sing about.
• Whales are highly developed animals and this can be seen in their ability to maintain constant contact with each other, exchange information, and give each other commands. Probably, for whales, the "words" of their language can be some kind of posture, movement, but the main means of communication are sound signals.
• With the help of sounds, contact is maintained not only between the calf and the mother, between the male and the female, between the members of the community, but also with other whales located at a distance of tens or even hundreds of kilometers from each other.
• The fact is that sounds travel much faster in water than in air. If whales did not possess this ability, many species, like blue whales, which were once strenuously exterminated by humans, would be doomed to inevitable extinction.
• There are so few of them left that chance encounters in the vast ocean of a male and a female are quite unlikely, and only thanks to sound signals, the animals are able to find each other, so there is still hope that the whales will be saved.
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• And yet, what are the whales singing about?
• Smooth whales use six types of tones, and the most common are low pitches that rise rapidly in pitch. They are usually used as a call to get together.
• Sounds that fall rapidly in height are intended to exchange information over a distance of several kilometers.
• A variety of sounds, including those reminiscent of loud cries and even growls, are emitted by whales when they get together.
• If animals are annoyed with something, they puff, and flapping fins on the water means anxiety or clarification of relations with each other.
• When the female dives into the depths and remains to hunt, the cub is on the surface, but maintains constant contact with the mother, exchanging one or two sounds from time to time.
• Male humpback whales perform whole serenades during the mating season. Only adults and strong "guys" sing.
• Their song is a demonstration of their own power, and the goal is to attract the attention of a lady.
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• The serenade is audible for many kilometers. When two males are engaged in vocal exercises, the rivals do not try to cover each other, but if someone bothers someone, then the more aggressive one draws closer to the competitor and makes him shut up.
• How they sort things out down there, no one knows yet.
• The humpback whale song sounds quite melodic. It consists of individual themes and musical phrases, which are repeated several times at regular intervals in a strictly defined sequence, and can last for half an hour.
• The sounds of gray whales, which they make in shallow water in winter, are well studied. Sighs, gurgles, knocks are common among them, but moans are especially common.
• Animals groan day and night when they swim alone and in flocks, and the most talkative ones are capable of emitting up to 50 groans per hour.
• Moans are very low sounds of great strength and last about two seconds. For what purpose the whales make these sounds is not yet clear.
• Perhaps they are intended for communication or it is a reaction to some external influences, to the noise of a nearby surf or a distant storm.
• Finally, moans may be just an expression of love longing, because this is the time of love, the time to find a friend and win her heart. Well, how not to moan here ?!
• And what the whales sing about is known only to them.

Do whales sing?

Whales are the only mammal besides humans that ... sings. Many of them make low cooing sounds, and humpback and smooth whales sing “songs” - a series of different sounds repeated in a certain sequence. The songs of the whales are so clear, the sounds are so organized, as if a composer had worked here. The shortest "aria" lasts six minutes, the longest - about half an hour. Sometimes the soloist performs his number for hours as an encore, stopping only to freshen up the air in his lungs. The meaning of the chanting of the "sirens of the abyss" is still unknown, but since whales sing almost exclusively during the breeding season, it can be assumed that singing performs some function in their family life. At first, it was believed that only males sing, but there is information that females sing songs to their babies.

The “repertoire” of the herd is constantly changing. Perhaps the "songs" are for more complex communication. In any case, somehow all the whales are aware of the slightest changes in the environment. How will they know about it? And in general - how do they sing if they do not have vocal cords?

However, many scientists are now inclined to believe that the sound reproducing system in whales is located in the front of the head. These are channels, cavities, valves and tubes located in the bony bed of the skull behind the fat pad, which serves as a kind of lens that guides and amplifies the acoustic beam.

Whale songs are sounds made by cetaceans to communicate. The word “songs” is used to emphasize the repetitive and melodic character of sounds, reminiscent of human singing.

Songs in representatives of different populations differ and can gradually change during the mating season; the whales perform them both alone and in chorus. In general, it is not known whether whale songs serve to attract females or to scare off other males and establish a hierarchy between them - it has been observed that songs often end in conflicts with other males.

A sophisticated communication system is necessary for these sea giants in order to communicate over considerable distances. So, the voice of a blue whale is carried in the water for more than 500 km, the songs of the fin whale also cover great distances. Humpback whales sing as they travel from feeding areas in Antarctica to areas where they will breed.

All animals use natural underwater amplifiers. Sound waves can best propagate at a depth of 1 kilometer, since it is at this level that the decreasing temperature and high pressure form a kind of channel. Sounds emitted into this "tunnel" can travel hundreds of kilometers.

Which animals are the loudest and most melodic songs? Most people, if asked this question, will not hesitate to answer - of course, bird songs! However, this opinion can be disputed. Extremely sonorous and varied songs not only among birds, but also among the inhabitants of the sea - cetaceans. And humpback whales undoubtedly hold the palm among them.

Gorbachi(Megaptera novaeangliae) belong to the suborder of baleen whales, the family of minke whales ( Balaenopteridae). These are large whales - their body length can reach 17–19 m, of which almost a third is a huge head. The dorsal fin is low, thick and rather resembles a small hump - hence the name "humpback", "humpback whale". But the pelvic fins of this whale are very impressive - 3-4 m in length, with bumpy, thickened front edges. On the head of the humpback, along the lower jaw, there are skin growths the size of half an orange, and on the front edge of the lower jaw there is a central growth with a diameter of up to 30 cm.The same growths are located on the upper part of the head. Each of them, as a rule, grows one hair.

Like other minke whales, longitudinal skin folds stretch along the throat and chest of the humpback. There are few of them, from 12 to 36, and they are wider and deeper than those of other members of the family. In each half of the upper jaw, there are 270 to 400 large (up to a meter long!) Plates of a whalebone - a filtering apparatus. The humpback feeds mainly on medium-sized fish (capelin and greenling) and crustaceans, but does not disdain cephalopods either.

This whale swims rather slowly - at a speed of about 10 km / h and only being frightened can move twice as fast. A humpback usually stays under water for 5–6 minutes, at most half an hour. A very interesting feature of this whale is its love of acrobatic jumping - huge animals make somersaults in the air, jumping out of the water, and often several times in a row.

Mating games in humpback whales can occur throughout the year, but usually occur during the winter. Like many other baleen whales, humpback whales rush into cold waters in summer, which are very rich in food at this time, and in winter they migrate closer to the equator in order to bring offspring in warm water. A female humpback bears a baby for about 12 months. The calf is born large - up to 4–4.6 m in length - and feeds on the mother’s milk for 6–10 months. Humpback whales reach sexual maturity at the age of 5 years, but, as a rule, they begin to reproduce no earlier than 8 or even 15 years of age. The known lifespan is 48 for males and 38 for females.

There are 9 herds of these animals in the oceans. Two of them inhabit the North Atlantic and migrate respectively from Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya to Cape Verde and from Greenland and Iceland to the Caribbean Sea. There are also two humpback herds in the North Pacific Ocean, moving from the Chukchi and Okhotsk seas south along the Asian or American coasts. In the waters of Russia, humpback whales can be found in the Bering Strait and the seas of the Pacific Ocean, as well as in the Barents Sea.

Five more herds of humpbacks live in the Southern Hemisphere and migrate from Antarctic waters, respectively, to the western shores of South America, the eastern shores of America and the western shores of Africa, to the eastern shores of Africa and Madagascar, to the western shores of Australia and the eastern shores of Australia, to New Zealand and the islands Polynesia. Representatives of different herds do not communicate with each other during the breeding season, but, apparently, they can sometimes meet in places of summer feeding.

Humpback whales, like other baleen whales, were the subject of active fishing, so that already at the beginning of the 20th century. their number has dropped dramatically. In the North Atlantic, fishing for these whales has been banned since 1955, in the South Atlantic since 1964, and in the North Pacific since 1966. Now the number of these whales has stabilized somewhat.

Having got acquainted with the main features of humpback biology, we now turn to the main topic of our article - their famous songs. Sounds - and quite loud - are emitted by almost all cetaceans, because one of the important ways of orienting these mammals is echolocation. Whales also actively use sounds to communicate with each other, and some of them are very talkative. The trills of beluga whales, nicknamed sea canaries, and the conversations of dolphins are widely known. Studies have shown that representatives of the family of smooth whales ( Balaenidae), for example bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus). But humpbacks, of course, are the brightest singers. Their singing can be surprisingly melodic and resembles the sound of a wide variety of musical instruments: oboe, clarinet, bagpipes. And if the recording of the voice of a humpback whale is scrolled at a much higher speed, we will hear a typical bird song. These animals can also make other sounds - mournful sobs, roars, or even a mouse squeak.

By the way, the voices of whales can be carried very far under water - acoustics have shown that in the seawater at a depth of about 1 km, there are so-called sound channels, through which sound can travel thousands of kilometers! The whales seem to be aware of these channels and use them to communicate and transmit information.

It is not known for certain when people first noticed the loud songs of humpbacks. But scientists began to study them only after the underwater microphone (hydrophone) was invented. The earliest recordings of the songs of these whales date back to the early 1950s, and their detailed descriptions, made by researchers R. Payne and S. McVeigh, appeared even later, in the early 1970s. Then biologists found that in the complex songs of humpbacks it is possible to distinguish separate themes and phrases, repeating at certain intervals. The length of each song is from 7 to 15 minutes and depends on how many such phrases and themes are included in each whale. When the song is finished, the whale usually starts it over, repeating all the phrases in the same sequence.

The researcher listens to the sounds with the help of a hydrophone,
published by humpback whale

The songs that humpback whales sing during mating time are especially beautiful and loud. And here's what's interesting - at the beginning of the breeding season, all males hum a similar melody, which gradually changes over time and becomes completely different by the end of winter. When humpbacks return to their breeding grounds a year later, they begin their vocal exercises with the theme they "stopped" on at the end of last season, and again after a few months the song changes. Sometimes within 2-3 years the song does not change very much, and sometimes - beyond recognition.

But why do whales need to keep their song constantly changing? The American researcher Cel Sergio suggested that in conditions when all males in a population hum the same thing, females may, simply put, get a little tired of it. And then those suitors who manage to introduce something new into their singing and in this way “rise above the crowd” will probably enjoy great success. At the same time, the new melody should not differ too much from the old one - otherwise it may lose its meaning, turning from a love serenade into something not at all attractive to females.

In 1996, Australian researcher Michael Noad began to study humpback songs. He listened to whales from the population breeding off the eastern shores of Australia. In the beginning, everything went well. All 82 males of the herd sang about the same thing, with slight variations. But then, towards the end of the season, Noad recorded the songs of two individuals, radically different from the singing of the others. At first, he even decided that these two were just sick with something ...

But when the researcher continued his observations six months later, he found that already a third of the males who had returned from their summer feeding were singing this newest song. True, the remaining two-thirds continued to sing the old one - but not for long. By the end of the season, almost all whales had mastered the new motive. And, returning in the third year, they sang only him. Prior to this, biologists did not even assume that humpbacks of the same population could sing two different songs at the same time. And that the song of the whales may not change gradually, but radically.

However, the surprises did not end there. When other scientists analyzed recordings of humpback songs breeding off the opposite, western coast of Australia, made by other scientists in 1996, it turned out that that year they all sang a song very similar to the one that two "sick Whale. How did the new melody get to them? During the breeding season, the eastern and western herds are completely isolated, but some of the individuals may possibly change their "registration" during the summer feeding off the coast of Antarctica. Biochemical studies have shown that mixing of genes does occur between populations, albeit very insignificantly.

But why did the whales living off the east coast so quickly adopted the new song introduced by strangers, or maybe just heard during feeding? Perhaps this phenomenon is akin to what is called fashion in human society? Let's remember: first, one single person, dressed in an unusual way, goes out into the street. It looks eccentric, it surprises other people. But then more and more people start to dress like this. And pretty quickly, the new style begins to be considered normal and ceases to be surprising. On the contrary, people dressed differently are now causing bewilderment ... It can be assumed that the whales also picked up the new song because they simply liked it - either by the performers themselves, or, more importantly, by female listeners who, as in human society are trendsetters ... Humpback whale watching continues. Perhaps in the future we will learn about new, not yet known, functions of the songs of these animals, or maybe over time we will be able to understand their relationships with each other, understand their needs and aspirations.

Literature

Würsig B. Behavior of baleen whales. // In the world of science. 1988. No. 6.

Morozov V. Entertaining bioacoustics. - M: Knowledge, 1983.

Fauna of the world. Mammals. - M: Agropromizdat, 1990.

Noad. M. Singing giants change their tune. // Nature Australia. 2002. V. 27. No. 4.

Life in the ocean is different from life on land. Dive underwater and try to sniff an orange or see something more than a meter away. Animals living in water had to develop special ways of perceiving the world, different from sight and smell. Sound has become one of these ways. Whales have a variety of sounds that they use to communicate and find their way through the dark depths at the same time. But only certain species of whales "sing".

Whales are divided into two groups depending on the feeding method: toothed whales and baleen whales.

Toothed whales are more aggressive. These include sperm whales, dolphins, and killer whales. These whales feed like tigers in the jungle, hunting and stalking prey (from small fish to octopuses and sea lions). They swallow everything they catch whole.

Outwardly, "better educated" baleen whales feed by swimming in the water with their mouths open and sucking small plants and animals along with the water. They filter water with planktonic molluscs, crustaceans and small fish through special horny plates. They are in the upper jaw from 360 to 800, they are from 20 to 450 cm long and are called a whalebone. The inner edge and apex of each plate are split into thin and long bristles, forming a kind of thick sieve. Baleen whales include huge blue whales and singing humpback whales.

The sea is dark even during the day, and many toothed whales travel and hunt at night. How do they do it? Just like a bat that flies in the middle of the night, some whales make sounds and then pick up their echoes. These sounds are similar to clicks or whistles. When a sound wave hits an obstacle in its path, such as a rock or fish, it is reflected back.

Normal ears cannot help underwater. Sound waves are vibrations in the air that cause the eardrum to move. And the wave propagating in the water makes the entire skull vibrate. Therefore, when whales returned to the ocean in ancient times, their now useless ear canals narrowed to the size of a needle's eye. However, whales have eardrums, only the sound goes to them along a completely different route, passing from the jawbone or forehead through the layer of fat to the eardrums.

In addition to clicking their jaws (which resemble a door creak), toothed whales use whistles and trills to communicate. (Beluga whale, which belongs to toothed whales, produces so many trills that it is called sea canary.) Whales also make sounds by striking with their tail fin (two tail plates). In some whales, these sounds are so loud that they resemble the sound of a jackhammer.

Baleen whales click, chirp, and whistle, just like toothed whales. But they also emit low-frequency groans. Humpback whales make similar sounds all the time they are chasing prey, and they can turn into a "song" and last more than an hour. Scientists call these "songs" because they have rhythm, structure and repetitive phrases (like choruses or refrains), and only humpback whales "sing".

Scientists who have recorded and analyzed these "songs" say that if they were to be decomposed into sounds and made into a language from these sounds, then some "songs" would contain information no less than a small book. Some sounds are too low for the human ear, so we can't hear them, others need to be played at a very slow pace so that we can make out them. The “song” itself is the same for whales from different parts of the ocean, but the number of phrases for each individual is individual. Whales change their "songs" depending on the season. No one knows why whales sing or what their "songs" mean. It has been suggested that "songs" help males to establish the boundaries of their domains or are part of a mating ritual. But these are just human interpretations of the whale world, which we may not understand at all.