Humpback whales throughout the entire South Pacific Ocean are connected to each other via shared song, according to new research.
From the east coast of Australia to French Polynesia to breeding grounds off Ecuador – a total distance of more than 14,000 kilometers – researchers have heard humpbacks trading the same viral hits.' during breeding season, and each population has a slightly different chorus of vocalizations that they string together in unique ways.Yet every once and a while, a breeding population will undergo a song 'revolution', whereby all the themes the males sing are replaced by new ones.
"This study demonstrates songs first identified in western populations can be transmitted across the entire South Pacific, supporting the potential for a circumpolar Southern Hemisphere cultural transmission of song and a vocal culture rivaled in its extent only by our own,"It's unclear at this point whether the whale songs can migrate across the Indian Ocean to get back to the coast of Australia.
Although we don't really know where the humpbacks in French Polynesia usually spend their summer months foraging for food, if they feed in a similar place to Ecuador's whale populations, then it's possible they are sharing tunes while bulking up or migrating through the Pacific.
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