Blog 13 - Whale Songs

In keeping with the discussion of non-human species that use forms of language, I thought it would be interesting to check out an article about the methods that whales use to communicate. Researchers from the University of Queensland’s Humpback Whale Research Collaboration (HARC) project claim that they have discovered at least 34 different types of whale calls. The researchers recorded the whales’ sounds by attaching underwater microphones to buoys about 1 kilometer off of the coast of Queensland. Because sight and smell are relatively limited underwater, the scientists postulate that marine animals depend upon sounds far more than land-based relatives. They expected to find about 10 different vocalizations. However, because the whales’ calls apparently vary both in length and in sound, they have a fairly larger repertoire. Their calls range from less than a second to over 10 seconds. The whales also produced high-pitched squeaks, shrieks, cries, purrs, groans, low yaps, and wops. Although only male humpback whales are famed for their “whale songs,” females and calves also communicate through these sorts of sounds.

Interestingly, the researchers think that they have been able to decode some of the whales’ communication. For instance, low purring by males seems to be an attempt to woo desirable females. High frequency screams seem to be associated with disagreements, especially as males try to escort females during migration. The wop sounds seem to be used by mothers and calves to identify their locations to one another. Although Dr. Rebecca Dunlop, one of the main researchers tied to the project, “stopped short of defining the whale communication as language,” she still noted that their communication shared some commonalities with human conversation. Which leads to the question of how long ago was the concept of communication in the form of some primitive set of verbal symbols developed in the brain? Also, the researchers’ investigation into the whales’ communicative abilities opens up the question of whether or not the skills of communication and language are evolved.

Scientists currently believe that whales’ and humans’ share common ancestors from 50-60 million years ago. I can then think of two possible reasons why whales and humans share some communicative abilities. Either a) mental constructs existed in our ancestors’ minds 50-60 million years ago or b) whales’ and humans’ ancestors developed these constructs independently. This second theory seems rather far fetched, because the random generation through evolution of two complicated and similar mental constructs seems fairly unlikely. So again, some species other than humans seem to share our capacity for communication. Nonetheless, it still seems to be an issue of degree. The researchers for HARC seemed amazed by the whales’ “vocabulary” of 34 vocalizations, but humans easily accumulate vocabularies of over tens of thousands of words. So perhaps the only thing separating our communication from the whales’ is the complexity of our language. But if it’s a question of degree, where do we draw the line? Where does animalistic communication end and human language start?

Pranav


http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSYD59010
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-11-07-voa15.cfm
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22714366-2,00.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/4/l_034_05.html