Whale songs

An interesting article about whale songs: Apparently whales in one group can learn the songs of whales in other groups. From student Libby Eyre:

“In 1985, the whales off the east coast of Australia were swimming up singing their old song, while the whales in Tonga were singing half of that song and half of their own song, which had some quite unique elements,” Eyre explains. “Then the east coast whales came back down singing a slightly upgraded version of their song.

“On the way up in 1986 each group was singing their own song of the previous year as usual, but by the time the guys on the east coast came back down in ’86, some of them were singing the old east coast song, some were singing the Tongan song and some were singing a mixture of the two. So perhaps some whales had come across from the Tonga group to the east coast group, or some east coast whales had gone across to the Tonga group and come back again, which is a long distance. In 1987 all the east coast whales that I recorded were singing the Tongan song.”

One thing I appreciate about the article is that the author mostly avoids specious claims about whale songs being a kind of ‘language’. It’s a mistake not avoided by this article in New Scientist, which follows a familiar pattern: make bold and outrageous claims in the first part of the article, and then abandon them bit by bit as the article progresses.

There may be repeating elements and sequences in whale songs, but no sign of actual syntax or recursion, which every human language shows.