Flicker Fly

“In the 1970s, scientists realized that humpback whales sing structured songs. Strangely, even if they’re coming from thousands of miles apart, males converging on mating grounds all sing the same song. Humpback song is composed of about ten different consecutive themes, each made of repeated phrases of about ten different notes requiring about fifteen seconds to sing. The song lasts about ten minutes. Then the whale repeats it. For hours in the ocean, in their season of courtship, the whales sing. Each ocean’s song is different, and over months and years it changes in the same way for the thousands of whales in each ocean, the song somehow a continual work in progress, fully shared. Sometimes the change is sudden and radical. In the year 2000, researchers announced that humpbacks’ song off Australia’s east coast was “replaced rapidly and completely” by the song Indian Ocean humpbacks off Australia’s west coast had been singing. It seems that a few “foreigners” made the trek west to east, and their song became such an instant hit with the easterners that everybody had to sing it. The researchers wrote, “Such a revolutionary change is unprecedented in animal cultural vocal traditions.” And once a phrase in the song disappears, it has never again been heard, despite over twenty years of eavesdropping. What do the songs mean? Researcher Peter Tyack says, “We may have to thank the evolving aesthetic sensibilities of generations of female humpbacks for the musical features of the males’ songs.” Songs of humpback whales, by the way, have sold millions of recordings. We share that aesthetic. That might be both the biggest mystery and the best evidence of like-mindedness.”