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Song copying by humpback whales: themes and variations

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Abstract

Male humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) produce long, structured sequences of sound underwater, commonly called “songs.” Humpbacks progressively modify their songs over time in ways that suggest that individuals are copying song elements that they hear being used by other singers. Little is known about the factors that determine how whales learn from their auditory experiences. Song learning in birds is better understood and appears to be constrained by stable core attributes such as species-specific sound repertoires and song syntax. To clarify whether similar constraints exist for song learning by humpbacks, we analyzed changes over 14 years in the sounds used by humpback whales singing in Hawaiian waters. We found that although the properties of individual sounds within songs are quite variable over time, the overall distribution of certain acoustic features within the repertoire appears to be stable. In particular, our findings suggest that species-specific constraints on temporal features of song sounds determine song form, whereas spectral variability allows whales to flexibly adapt song elements.

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Acknowledgements

We are most grateful to the many researchers and volunteers at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory who took part in obtaining the recordings analyzed in this study. We thank Scott Spitz and Harry Partika for assistance with procuring suitable computer equipment for the study, Russ Charif and Chris Clark for providing software capable of running on this equipment, and Eric Whiting and Wadie Sirgany for their technical assistance with analyses of recordings. We also thank Ute Schröder, Yasmin Tajik, Christa Weiss, and Toni Cimino for their assistance with assessments of recordings and formatting of data. We appreciate the comments of Scott Murray and Neil Frazer on earlier versions of this manuscript. This work was supported in part by a grant from Earthwatch to L. Herman. These studies comply with the current laws of the United States of America; recordings of whale song were obtained under National Marine Fisheries Service permits (nos. 223, 576, 810, and 941).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, Park Hall, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    Eduardo Mercado III

  2. Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory, 1129 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu, HI, 96814, USA

    Louis M. Herman & Adam A. Pack

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  1. Eduardo Mercado III
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  2. Louis M. Herman
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  3. Adam A. Pack
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Correspondence to Eduardo Mercado III.

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Mercado, E., Herman, L.M. & Pack, A.A. Song copying by humpback whales: themes and variations. Anim Cogn 8, 93–102 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-004-0238-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-004-0238-7

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