Bowhead whales love singing in dark

Washington: Bowhead whales - the ‘ jazz musicians’ of the Arctic - prefer to sing many different songs in the darkness of the polar winter, a study has found.

Researchers at the University of Washington in the US have published the largest set of recordings for bowhead whales, to discover that these marine mammals have a surprisingly diverse, constantly shifting vocal repertoire.

The new data suggests bowhead whales may be similar to cowbirds and meadowlarks, birds that learn a diverse, everchanging repertoire of songs, maybe because novelty offers some advantage.

“Bowhead whales do this behaviour in the winter, during 24- hour darkness of the polar winter, in 95 to 100 per cent sea ice cover. So this is not something that is easy to figure out,” said Kate Stafford, an oceanographer at University of Washington.

“We would never have known about this without new acoustic monitoring technology,” said Stafford.

The study analysed audio recordings gathered year- round east of Greenland.

This population of bowhead whales was hunted almost to extinction in the 1600s and was recently estimated at about 200 animals.

Audio recordings gathered from 2010 to 2014 indicate a healthy population, and include 184 different songs.

Bowhead whales do this behaviour in the winter, during 24- hour darkness of the polar winter, in 95 to 100 per cent sea ice cover.

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