Australian humpback whales sing new love song

November 30, 2000
Web posted at: 12:58 PM EST (1758 GMT)

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- Australia's east coast humpback whales are singing a very different tune these days and all in the name of love.

Male humpbacks migrating along the east coast have stunned scientists by abandoning their signature mating song and adopting a new tune from a small group of visiting Indian Ocean whales.

"There has been a cultural takeover by the west coast whales," marine scientist Michael Noad told Reuters on Thursday.

"What is staggering is that all the males have switched to the new song which was brought over by a few ambassadors from the west coast," said Noad, co-author of a report on the musical revolution in the latest issue of scientific journal Nature.

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"It was a revolution in their culture, rather than an evolution," Noad said.

And the revolution was akin to the arrival of rock 'n' roll in popular culture, with the east coast male humpbacks now serenading the opposite sex with a low moan and big growl instead of a higher pitched woop, woop, woop.

Between 1995 and 1998 scientists from the Marine Mammal Research Centre at Sydney University analysed 1,057 hours of whale songs recorded along the Australian east coast.

Humpback whale song patterns depend on where the whale lives, with populations inhabiting different oceans singing quite distinct songs. Whale songs typically run between seven and 15 minutes and contain several themes like verses in human songs.

The male whale produces his song from the larynx and on a good day the song is audible for up to 30 km (18 miles).

Whales sing their songs during the mating season to attract females as they swim from the icy Antarctic waters to warm north Australian waters and back to the Antarctic.

In 1996 the scientists discovered that two humpback whales, out of 82 recorded, were singing a new song. The song was similar to tunes sung by whales visiting from the Indian Ocean.

A year later, most of the 112 whales recorded were using both the old and new song. But by the end of 1997 as the whales migrated back down the east coast towards Antarctica all the male whales had switched to the new song.

Noad said the sample was large enough to conclude that all the male humpbacks in the 3,000 east coast population had switched to the new song by 1998.

"By the end of 1997 the old song was virtually extinct and in 1998 there was nothing but the new song," he said, adding the new song was probably adopted on mass to attract the opposite sex.

"The theory is the novelty of the new song is what made it popular," said Noad. "Female whales hear the same song over and over again and get bored and disinterested in the males, so the males alter their songs slightly to stand out in the crowd."

"Like human fashion, they all want to fit in. But they don't what to change it too much as they'll be weird and not fit in," he said. "But when the west Australian whales arrived with a new song, it was novel and it became a new trend."

Noad doesn't believe the catchy new mating song will lead to an explosion in humpback breeding as the east coast whales are already multiplying at a healthy 11 percent a year.

"In whale terms they are breeding like rabbits," Noad said.

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