Why do whales sing?

Can whales sing? After 12 years of research, American zoologist Roger Payne and his wife recorded a large number of whales' calls in the water with instruments, and then compared them with computers. They found that whales can really sing beautiful songs, usually 6 minutes to 30 minutes, which is 14 times faster and sounds like euphemistic birdsong.

As we all know, whales have no vocal cords. What is the principle of their sound? Scientists are all puzzled by this strange phenomenon. In the research results, it is found that whales sing the same song whether swimming alone or in groups in the sea, but with different rhythms. Comparing the songs sung by whales over the years, it is also found that all whales sing the same song in the same year, but they don't sing together, and they all sing new songs the next year. These songs have evolved year by year. The songs of these two years have more similarities, but the songs across the years have changed. Amazingly, even whales that are geographically far apart, such as whales in Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean and whales in Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, start to sing different songs, but after careful analysis, the structure and changing rules of the songs are the same.

Scientists tracked humpback whales for six months, made a lot of underwater recordings and photos, and found that whales sang last year's songs every year when they returned to their original places, and then gradually changed, but the songs during the breeding period did not change. This shows that the whale's intelligence can remember all the complicated sounds and sequences in a song, store these memories for half a year, and then add new changes.

At present, the research on whale singing is limited to first-hand information. In the summer of 1977, the United States launched a spaceship to explore other galaxies into the Milky Way, which contained records that could be preserved for 10 billion years. In addition to classical and modern music and greetings from 55 languages of UN Member States, the album also specially recorded a whale song, hoping to find an opportunity in the vast universe.