Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA00735 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 4 Dec 2000 16:40:34 GMT Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 09:00:06 -0800 (PST) From: Dave Gross <dave@eorbit.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: song learning in humpback whales Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0012040858480.19515-100000@boojiboy.eorbit.net> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/11/30/MN54204.DTL
(see also: http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999222
http://www.sciam.com/news/120100/4.html )
Whales Can Learn New Songs
(When It Comes to Tunes, Whales Can Be Teenyboppers)
Musical crazes occasionally sweep through the
deep blue sea, as surely as they sweep through
the world of teenagers.
Male humpback whales readily learn and "sing"
radically new songs from other whales, according
to research published in today's issue of Nature.
The phenomenon was likened by one expert to
the "Beatles invasion" of U.S. musical tastes in
the mid-1960s.
The discovery strengthens growing suspicions
that at least some higher animals' behavior isn't
totally guided by genetically encoded rules.
Rather, they possess a form of "culture" that can
be passed on nongenetically. In this case, the
whales learned a new musical repertoire from
other whales, instead of being restricted to tunes
programmed into their DNA.
Scientists have long known that humpbacks
slowly change their songs over time. But this is
the first known instance in which the creatures
rapidly switched to a significantly different tune
introduced by a foreign population of whales,
according to the research team led by Michael J.
Noad of the University of Sydney in Australia.
Analyzing tape-recorded sounds from more than
100 male humpbacks, Noad discovered that
over several months, a radically new tune sung
by two humpbacks from the west coast of
Australia was picked up by numerous other
whales on the east coast.
The shift in whale songs is "like going from rock
to Sid Vicious," Noad observed during a phone
interview. Among the Australian humpback
whales, "the new song has become the 'flavor of
the month.' "
The tape recordings were made by two of Noad's
colleagues, Micheline Jenner and K. Curt S.
Jenner of the Centre for Whale Research in
Fremantle, Australia.
The Jenners sent the taped evidence to Noad, a
graduate student in bioacoustics at the
University of Sydney.
Listening to the tape "was one of those 'Eureka!'
moments," Noad recalled. "I was stunned. I even
pulled the tape out to check that I hadn't put in
the wrong tape."
The Noad team's paper has drawn generally
enthusiastic reaction from colleagues.
"This was a much more dramatic and rapid
change than we've ever seen before with
humpback song. And it really clinches the case
that humpback song is a learned behavior,"
rather than genetically programmed, said Peter L.
Tyack, an animal behavior researcher at Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole,
Mass. He was not connected with the Noad
team's study.
Tyack said a "perfect analogy" is British rock
music's monstrously successful conquest of U.S.
musical tastes in the mid-1960s -- the "Beatles
invasion," as it is called.
Zoologist Salvatore Cerchio of the University of
Michigan compared the Noad team's discovery
to another famous event in the study of animal
behavior: Jane Goodall witnessing "warfare"
among chimpanzee groups after researchers
had long since concluded such an event was
impossible.
In an e-mailed response to a Chronicle
reporter's inquiry, Cerchio wrote: "It is most likely
one of those rare occasions where a researcher
quite luckily and accidentally witnesses a rarely
occurring and unusual phenomenon . . ."
Why would humpback males switch tunes so fast
and radically, as if switching platters from Bing
Crosby to David Bowie? For now, experts can
only speculate.
One possibility is that by singing a different tune,
a male humpback is likelier to stand out from the
crowd. Hence, Noad speculates, it's likelier to
attract the attention of a female humpback.
The whale song apparently conveys no
information, like a language. Rather, it is simply
an elaborate musical flourish intended to attract
females -- "an acoustic version of a peacock's
tail," Noad speculates.
A humpback song typically lasts about 10
minutes and is "highly structured, highly
organized and redundant," Noad says. In that
regard, he offers a warning to anyone attracted to
his line of work: Although his job may sound
romantic -- listening to more than 1,000 hours
of whale songs, tape-recorded by instrumented
buoys -- the tunes are "repeated ad nauseam,
over and over and over again . . ."
"It's pretty soul-destroying, in some ways, sitting
there and listening over and over to whale
songs."
Not everyone is enthused about the Noad team's
claim. One skeptic is Eduardo Mercado III, a
postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Molecular
and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers
University in Newark, N.J.
Contrary to widespread belief, "I don't believe
that humpback whales sing," Mercado explained.
Rather, "the sound sequences produced by male
humpback whales are a form of long-range
sonar used by males to locate other whales, as
opposed to a mating display -- or song -- as
suggested by . . . Noad and most other
cetologists."
Noad doesn't buy Mercado's explanation. If
humpbacks generated the sounds simply to find
their way around, then why not keep the sounds
"very simple? Why have an elaborate,
multilayered song?" Noad asks. "It's very
counter- intuitive."
Some scholars see the Noad paper as important
new evidence for the reality of animal "culture." In
other words, certain special animals aren't simply
like wind-up toys, whose behavior is controlled
totally by their DNA. Rather, some animals
transmit information to their fellows and offspring
nongenetically, by teaching or imitation.
"There's a growing interest (in) culture in
animals," Tyack said. For example, Japanese
primate researchers working in Africa have
found evidence of "chimp cultures" that pass
down knowledge, from generation to generation,
of the best ways to crack open nuts.
E-mail Keay Davidson at
kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.
©2000 San Francisco Chronicle Page A4
===============================This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 04 2000 - 16:42:02 GMT