Whale Music: Anatomy of an Interspecies Duet

Rothenberg, David

doi:10.1162/lmj.2008.18.47

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…A musician recently collected further evidence that humpback whale singers alter their songs based on the sounds they experience when he attempted an improvisational duet with a singing humpback whale (Rothenberg, 2008). Rothenberg used an underwater speaker and hydrophone to create a two-way sound channel with a nearby singing whale.…”

Section: Convergence In Humpback Whale Singingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

Mercado¹,

Mantell²,

Pfordresher³

2014

CCBR

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Vocal imitation is often described as a specialized form of learning that facilitates social communication and that involves less cognitively sophisticated mechanisms than more "perceptually opaque" types of imitation. Here, we present an alternative perspective. Considering current evidence from adult mammals, we note that vocal imitation often does not lead to learning and can involve a wide range of cognitive processes. We further suggest that sound imitation capacities may have evolved in certain mammals, such as cetaceans and humans, to enhance both the perception of ongoing actions and the prediction of future events, rather than to facilitate mate attraction or the formation of social bonds. The ability of adults to voluntarily imitate sounds is better described as a cognitive skill than as a communicative learning mechanism. Sound imitation abilities are gradually acquired through practice and require the coordination of multiple perceptual-motor and cognitive mechanisms for representing and generating sounds. Understanding these mechanisms is critical to explaining why relatively few mammals are capable of flexibly imitating sounds, and why individuals vary in their ability to imitate sounds. Keywords: mimicry; copying; social learning; singing; emulation; imitatible; convergence; imitativenessIn his seminal text, Habitat and Instinct, Lloyd Morgan (1896, p. 166) describes two general kinds of imitation: instinctive imitation and intelligent or voluntary imitation. The examples he provides of intelligent imitation mostly involve reproducing sounds-a child copies words used by his companions, a mockingbird imitates the songs of 32 other bird species, a jay imitates the neighing of a horse, and so on. In fact, most of the examples of "imitation proper" that Morgan provides consist of birds reproducing the sounds of other species. Similarly, Romanes (1884) focuses almost exclusively on reports of birds imitating songs, music, and speech in his discussion of imitation. These classic portrayals of vocal reproductions as providing the best and clearest examples of imitation stand in stark contrast to current psychological discussions of imitation, which often classify examples such as those given by Romanes and Morgan as non-imitative performances that merely resemble actual imitation (Byrne, 2002;Heyes, 1996). When did phenomena that were once considered archetypal examples of voluntary imitation transform into a footnote of modern cognitive theories? Was some discovery made that fundamentally changed our scientific understanding of the processes underlying vocal imitation? Have psychologists or biologists succeeded in explaining what vocal imitation is and how it works to the point where little can be gained from further study? Or, have theoretical assumptions led scientists to underestimate the cognitive mechanisms required for an individual to be able to flexibly imitate sounds?In the present article, we attempt to identify what exactly vocal imitation entails, and to assess whether current explanatory fr...

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Section: Convergence In Humpback Whale Singingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

Mercado¹,

Mantell²,

Pfordresher³

2014

CCBR

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“…That being said, given the known vocal imitation abilities of cetaceans ( Mercado et al, 2014 ), and their impressive cognitive capacities ( Mercado and Delong, 2010 ), it would be surprising if singing humpback whales are limited to genetically-determined reactions to the sound sequences they produce and experience. Consistent with this possibility, anecdotal observations suggest that singers can flexibly respond to unique sound sequences ( Rothenberg, 2008 ). In this respect, the behavior of individual singers, especially in contexts where social interactions are limited, may be more comparable to the flexible, voluntary actions of humans than they are to the collective, reflexive reactions of fish or ants.…”

Section: Understanding the Nature Of Humpback Whale Song Transformatimentioning

confidence: 82%

Song Morphing by Humpback Whales: Cultural or Epiphenomenal?

Mercado

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Singing humpback whales (Megaptera noavaengliae) collectively and progressively change the sounds and patterns they produce within their songs throughout their lives. The dynamic modifications that humpback whales make to their songs are often cited as an impressive example of cultural transmission through vocal learning in a non-human. Some elements of song change challenge this interpretation, however, including: (1) singers often incrementally and progressively morph phrases within and across songs as time passes, with trajectories of change being comparable across multiple time scales; (2) acoustically isolated subpopulations singing similar songs morph the acoustic properties of songs in similar ways; and (3) complex sound patterns, including phrases, themes, and whole songs, recur across years and populations. These properties of song dynamics suggest that singing humpback whales may be modulating song features in response to local conditions and genetic predispositions rather than socially learning novel sound patterns by copying other singers. Experimental and observational tests of key predictions of these alternative hypotheses are critical to identifying how and why singing humpback whales constantly change their songs.

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“…It was made by a diver using a Sony digital audio tape recorder encased in an underwater housing at close range to the singer [41, 42]. The 2007 recording (12 min) was made off the coast of Maui from a boat using two Cetacean Research SQ26-08 hydrophones connected to a Sony MZ- M10 Hi-MD Minidisc Recorder, and stored as uncompressed PCM audio sampled at 44.1 kHz [43, 44]. The bathymetry and bottom composition at the specific locations of these recordings is unknown, but singing whales are most commonly found in waters surrounding Maui that are less than 200 m deep [45], where the bottom usually consists of silty sand and clay with intermittent outcrops of coral and rocks [3].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic Signaling by Singing Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae): What Role Does Reverberation Play?

Mercado

2016

PLoS ONE

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When humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) sing in coastal waters, the units they produce can generate reverberation. Traditionally, such reverberant acoustic energy has been viewed as an incidental side-effect of high-amplitude, long-distance, sound transmission in the ocean. An alternative possibility, however, is that reverberation actually contributes to the structure and function of songs. In the current study, this possibility was assessed by analyzing reverberation generated by humpback whale song units, as well as the spectral structure of unit sequences, produced by singers from different regions. Acoustical analyses revealed that: (1) a subset of units within songs generated narrowband reverberant energy that in some cases persisted for periods longer than the interval between units; (2) these highly reverberant units were regularly repeated throughout the production of songs; and (3) units occurring before and after these units often contained spectral energy peaks at non-overlapping, adjacent frequencies that were systematically related to the bands of reverberant energy generated by the units. These findings strongly suggest that some singing humpback whales not only produce sounds conducive to long-duration reverberation, but also may sequentially structure songs to avoid spectral overlap between units and ongoing reverberation. Singer-generated reverberant energy that is received simultaneously with directly transmitted song units can potentially provide listening whales with spatial cues that may enable them to more accurately determine a singer’s position.

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Whale Music: Anatomy of an Interspecies Duet

Cited by 19 publications

References 3 publications

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

Song Morphing by Humpback Whales: Cultural or Epiphenomenal?

Acoustic Signaling by Singing Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae): What Role Does Reverberation Play?

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