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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 64: Jul-Aug 1989 |
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Poets at sea: or why do whales rhyme?
We found the following in Newsweek:
"When scientists talk about whales singing songs, they're not talking about mere noise. They're talking about intricate, stylized compositions - some longer than symphonic movements - performed in medleys that can last up to 22 hours. The songs of humpback whales can change dramatically from year to year, yet each whale in an oceanwide population always sings the same song as the others. How, with the form changing so fast, does everyone keep the verses straight? Biologists Linda Guinee and Katharine Payne have been looking into the matter, and they have come up with an intriguing possibility. It seems that humpbacks, like humans, use rhyme."
Guinee and Payne suspect that whales rhyme because they have detected particular subphrases turning up in the same position in adjacent themes.
(Cowley, Geoffrey; "Rap Songs from the Deep," Newsweek, p. 63, March 20, 1989. Cr. J. Covey)
Comment. This is all wonderfully fascinating, but why do whales rhyme at all, or sing such long complex songs? Biologists fall back on that hackneyed old theory that it has something to do with mating and/or dominance displays. Next, we'll hear that human poets write poems only to improve their chances of breeding and passing their genes on to their progeny!
Reference. Whale "communication" is the subject of BMT8 in our catalog: Biologi cal Anomalies: Mammals I. Details here.