Whale songs are some of the most amazing sounds on Earth and can be heard from far away in the sea world.
Now, scientists have finally discovered how filter-feeding marine mammals produce these sounds.
Researchers said on Wednesday that baleen whales, like humpback whales, including the blue whale, the largest creatures in the history of planet Earth, use a larynx, or vocal box, whose anatomical structure allows them to make sounds underwater.
The researchers added that the whales appeared to have an anatomical structure, which is a lining of fat and muscles inside the larynx.
This means that huge whales make their sounds using their larynx, just as humans do, but there is another mechanism for making sounds that uses a special organ in the nasal passages of toothed whales, such as dolphins, killer whales, and sperm whales.
It was discovered in the 1970s that huge whales are highly vocal, but exactly how they make their sounds remains an unknown secret.
“They are among the most impressive animals to ever grace our planet,” said Koen Elemans, a biologist at the University of Southern Denmark. “They are highly intelligent and social animals that would have outsized dinosaurs and ate the smallest species of shrimp. They have a rare ability to learn new songs and spread their vocal culture across the planet.” “. Ellimans is lead author of the study published in the scientific journal Nature.
“To communicate and find each other in dark oceans, large whales rely critically on making sounds. For example, female humpback whales communicate with their offspring by sound,” he added.
W said. Techemseh Fitch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Vienna and a participant in the study, “What is surprising is that… the main source of sound, which is the natural science of the interaction between air and tissue, follows the same principles as in other mammals, from bats to tigers to elephants.” And even humans and birds as well.”
“All of these species appear to have exploited the same set of tricks to make sounds, even though they used different organs or parts of different organs to make the sounds,” Fitch added.
The study also showed that whale sounds fall in the same frequency range and depth in the ocean, about 100 metres, as human-made ship noise, disrupting the whales' ability to communicate.
“Unfortunately… baleen whales are limited in terms of their physiology, and cannot easily seek higher or deeper layers to avoid human interference,” Ellimans said.
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