BrainStuff Classics: Do Whales Have Pop Songs?

Whale songs are eerie, beautiful, and -- as it turns out -- completely on-trend. Learn how humpback whales share tunes among herds in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/humpback-whales-start-new-songs-old-too-complex.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vobblebomb here with a classic episode from our archives.
I love this one about humpback whales and their haunting songs.
It turns out that humpbacks repeat and build on each
other's music, similar to how humans play and cover pop songs.

(00:27):
Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogelbaumb And as it turns out,
humans aren't the only creatures that create and riff on
catchy tunes.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Whales have pop music too. During breeding season, as male
humpback whales swim along, they sing the same song. Females
never sing, only males do to find a mate or
to posture for other males. The song is passed back
and forth between the members of a pod, each whale
adding his own little flourishes, and as that pod meets
other pods, they pass the tunes along until whole oceans

(00:57):
ring with the song of the moment. In the world
of human pop music, what was the hot song of
the summer will be dropped by every radio station in
the fall to make room for the new hot thing.
A research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society
b suggests that the same is true for whale songs.
The popular tune becomes gradually more and more complex as
it's altered by different populations of humpbacks, but after a

(01:20):
few years, the whales grow tired of their complicated ditty
and start from scratch again. The research team, based out
of the University of Queensland rated the complexity of song
recordings of ninety five humpback whales from different populations in
the Indian Ocean over the course of thirteen consecutive years.
They found that over the course of a couple of years,
the same song spread all the way across the South Pacific,

(01:42):
from East Australia to French Polynesia. Lead author Jenny Allen,
a marine biologist in the Cetacean Ecology and Acoustics Laboratory
at the University of Queensland, said in a press release.
Typically these songs changed gradually, possibly through embellishments by individual singers.
We suspect the embellishments allow bulls to stand out from
their peers, much like teenage boys trying to stand out

(02:03):
from the crowd. But every few years the songs are replaced,
always by something simpler, suggesting there is a limit to
the whale's capacity to learn new material. Although there is
evidently a limit to how much whales can learn, the
build up and abandonment of particular songs signifies a rapid
cultural change over thousands of miles of ocean. Alan said
that's basically unparalleled in non human culture. Dolphins do have

(02:27):
fads too, though they have only been observed on a
smaller scale. An individual named Billy, who learned to walk
backwards on her tail and captivity, later taught the trick
to some wild dolphins after she was released. The dolphin
moonwalk really took off for a while.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Today's episode is based on the article humpback Whales start
simpler songs as old ones get too complex on houstuffworks
dot com. Written by Jesslyn Shields. Brainstuff is production of
by Heart Radio in partnership with houstuffworks dot Com and
its produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.