Just as people share hit songs with friends, humpback whales create new songs every year and share them far and wide, new research shows.
The study found that humpback whales can learn incredibly complex songs from whales from other regions – provided animals can exchange cultures.
“It really indicates a level of cultural transmission above any observed non-human species,” said researcher Dr Jenny Allen, of the University of Queensland’s School of Veterinary Science.
The study found that New Caledonian humpback whales could learn songs from humpback whales from Australia’s east coast with remarkable accuracy.
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This supports the idea that whale songs are learned on shared migration routes, such as around New Zealand, or shared feeding grounds such as Antarctica.
Kiwi scientists have previously found that humpback whales congregate at New Zealand’s remote Kermadec Islands / Rangitāhua to “jam” and share songs.
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The research shows New Caledonian male humpback whales learn complex songs from humpback whales in Eastern Australia, most likely as they get closer together as they migrate past New Zealand or feed in Antarctica.
Allen said the new study documented cultural exchange on a large scale and was a rare example of social learning between entire populations.
“We hope these findings provide a model for further study to understand the evolution of cultural communication in animals and humans,” she said.
“Movement of entire song patterns across multiple populations, as observed in the South Pacific, has not yet been documented anywhere else worldwide or any species other than humans,” the research said.
The study looked closely at the singing patterns of male humpback whales between 2009 and 2015, and found that the Australian humpback whale population made exactly the same noises as the New Caledonian whales.
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Dr Jenny Allen, a researcher at the University of Queensland who took photos of boat-based recordings, says the research on whale singing shows a cultural exchange that has not been observed in animals before.
“And every year we observed them, they sang a different song, so that means humpback whales can very quickly learn an entire song pattern from a different population, even if it’s complex or difficult,” Allen said.
While humpback whales were recently removed from the list of endangered species, she said the research could help manage the population.
“It is known to significantly improve the efficiency of conservation and management methods to have an in-depth understanding of a species.”
The research is a collaboration with Opération Cétacés of New Caledonia and has been published in Scientific Reports.