Whales are marine vertebrates that communicate by sending vocal signals through their environment, the ocean. In the ocean, these signals can travel very long distances which is extremely important since the ocean is so large, but it also means that they will encounter thousands of other vocal signals from other whales and marine animals at the same time. This article compares the sounds heard in the ocean by a whale, to how a room full of people at a cocktail party would sound to humans. Much like humans, whales have the ability to tune their hearing to particular signal that they want to listen to. What makes whales hearing so unique is that they can detect rhythms in the ocean chatter that is virtually impossible for the human ear to detect.
Several marine biologists at Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center developed a tool to detect these rhythms which act as identifying agents for each specific animal. These biologists also found that the whales use a technique in which they change intervals between echolocating clicks. This helps to prevent cluttering the echos from their calls. Marine biologist Natalie Sidorovskaia suggests that whales are "polite listeners" that strive to not interrupt each other.
This communication strategy seems to work well for whales in exploring their environment faster and more efficiently. It also seems to be used to identify whales by variances in the rhythm of their calls and clicks. It is quite amazing to me that these whales are able to keep their calls from overlapping in such a vast environment with so much other clutter being exposed to them at all times. More specific details of the results are scheduled to be presented next week to the Acoustical Society of America. In these results I would be interested to see if there if there was a pattern in the length of time between calls of an individual whale that would make it easier for them to not overlap calls, if they were programed to only call at certain times, or if it is simply a matter of listening and knowing when to respond.
--Kathleen Goller (Group B, Week 5)
AH! This sucks. Not your article-- it's great (great explanation and evaluation of the material), but the fact I just posted mine after yours, thinking "sweet, no one did THIS article...". Whale competition next time in class, Rock/Paper/Scissor.
ReplyDeleteDo you know where this study was conducted? It seems like you would have to have quite the elaborate experimental design to study such large roaming marine vertebrates. I was also wondering how long the study was conducted. That's a long time to be on a boat. (I'm sure they were allowed off every now and then.)
ReplyDeleteposted by: Jess Bouchard (1)
This was really interesting. I learned a lot by reading both your post and Alex's.
ReplyDeleteThe comparison to a crowd at a cocktail party reminded me of how people will block out most noise in a crowd to focus on a conversation. It seems like the whales have fine-tuned this.
It makes sense that the whales would try not to interrupt each other, since they rely so heavily on echolocation. Did you find out anything about how the whales know when another whale's signal will end so they do not overlap?
-Sarah Benjamin
This article is very interesting. I noticed that when I am in a room with a lot of people I tune out the people I don't want to. Did it mention the distance whales can do this at? I figure the further away they get the more interference there would be in between them.
ReplyDelete-Sam Babcock
I absolutely love whales and it amazes me how well they can communicate. How do they know when to change intervals between clicks so that they do not overlap with another call? Are they able to tell how long another whales call is so they can time their own call?
ReplyDelete-Tara Quist