Question:

Humpback whales singing?

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Trying to find out why they sing...Can't seem to find a exact answer. Anyone be able to help or is it an unknown?

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  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpback_wh...

    Scientists are still unsure of the purpose of whale song. Only male humpbacks sing, so it was initially assumed that the purpose of the songs was to attract females. However, many of the whales observed to approach singing whales have been other males, with the meeting resulting in a conflict. Thus, one interpretation is that the whale songs serve as a threat to other males.[19] Some scientists have hypothesized that the song may serve an echolocative function.[20] During the feeding season, humpback whales make altogether different vocalizations, which they use to herd fish into their bubble nets.[21]


  2. mating.... the females sing the songs and attract the males so they can MAKE DA BABIES!! i'm pretty sure.

  3. hiiii,

    Humpback whales sing some of the most beautiful songs on Earth. As they swam along the east coast of Australia, scientist Dr Michael Noad, from the Australian Marine Mammal Research Centre at Sydney University, used underwater microphones to record them.



    A Phrase is made up of several repeated Elements. Identical phrases are strung together to form a Theme and several Themes form a whole Song.

    Humpback whale 'song' was first described in 1971. Since then, despite many studies, little has been learnt about how and why the whales sing. We know that the males produce the long songs. It is likely that, as the males sing mainly during the breeding part of the year, the song is related with mating. Whether it is used mainly to attract females or threaten other males is not known.

    The song itself is an amazing phenomenon. It is highly structured, and, at any one time, all the males in the population sing the same song using the same sounds arranged in the same pattern. Over time, however, this pattern changes, but all the singers make the same changes to their songs. After a few years the song may be quite different, but all the singers are still singing the same new song.

    hope this helps you..........

  4. Nobody knows the true purpose of the beautiful song of the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), but because of the subtle ways it changes from one season to the next, in all likelihood, it is an historic poem, but it may be much more than that.

    Every sound the cetaceans make, other than intestinal noises, has an odd "tinny" quality that is so distinct I can recognize their communication from other whistles.  This is caused by the fact that cetacean sounds produce two distinct types of sound waves, one peaked and the other chopped off flat, and it is the seemingly random pattern of peaked and chopped sounds waves that produce that tinny effect.  Two distinctly different sound waves in seemingly random patterns points to the conclusion that the cetaceans have probably been using binary code, the language of computers, for perhaps tens of millions of years, whereas we just began using it less than a hundred years ago.  Since they have no way to write their history, it makes sense that they would have an oral tradition, and that one species would keep that tradition for all of them.  In a communication the length of the humpbacks song, there is literally room to store the contents of several books.

    The humpbacks only sing when they are near the surface, and the songs are not expected to travel great distances.  If they want to communicate over great distances, they dive to great depths and communicate at 16-20 Hz, far below our hearing range, and those low frequencies carry around the world.

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