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Published: Saturday, 25 January 2025 at 10:00 AM
Nature’s greatest composers: why male humpback whales sing together in harmony
Read on to discover why male humpback whales teach each other to sing in harmony…
Singing: the ultimate acts of male bonding, for men… and whales
Männerchöre: the German tradition of male-voiced choirs in the 19th century that generated so much repertoire by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner and all. Too little performed these days, these drinking songs and ripping yarns for male-voiced choruses are part of a long tradition of what happens when groups of blokes self-segregate and raise their voices about wine, women and song.
A remarkable analogy in the contemporary musical world for such expressions of Männerchor-style togetherness is to be found not in concert halls or sporting stadiums, but deep in our oceans. I’m not talking about Jules Verne-style assemblages of underwater singers burbling through their scuba gear. I mean male humpback whales, who get together at nodal points of their vast migration routes that gird the globe, meeting with one purpose: to sing.
Whale song: passed on from one male humpback to the next
The songs that humpback populations perform – and it’s only the males who sing these extended songs, for reasons that researchers like Ellen Garland at the University of St Andrews speculate are to do with everything from mating rituals to socialisation to navigation – are an astounding bio-musical phenomenon. The songs span huge reaches of acoustic possibility, from high-pitched chirps and clicks to low-register moans. They can travel for dozens of miles through the ocean, and they can be performed in phrases that last from seconds up to half an hour.
What’s most fantastic about Garland’s research is that she has discovered that whole populations of male humpbacks share the same song, which they all learn, perform and repeat. That means that humpback whales have created a repertoire that they have probably been singing throughout their nearly million-year evolutionary history.
Why whales sing together: an extended and constantly evolving repertoire
And what is truly jaw-dropping is the mechanics of how whales share and change their songs. When an individual of one humpback population encounters a member of another, they might hear a new song and choose to incorporate elements into their own repertoire. The group decides on the shape of their new song at those get-togethers at key points of their global migrations.
In other words: male humpbacks are collectively composing and performing a precise yet ever-changing collection of songs. Are they continually trying to impress the females with performances of new repertoire? Are they competing with one another as individuals, or as whole communities to see whose song is the most powerful? Or are they simply singing for the sheer glory of being alive, and hearing the resonances of their songs in the unique acoustics of the open ocean? All of the above, very possibly, and for other reasons that cetacean science is still exploring.
The Männerchor tradition didn’t go away – it just went deep underwater.