The mystery of whale singing has been revealed: how the melodies of marine mammals spread across the ocean

Scientists have uncovered the secret of whale singing. A specialized vocal apparatus, unlike the vocal apparatus of any other animal, allows whales to “sing.” Unfortunately, their narrow frequency range makes them vulnerable to glitches.

Whales have many talents, but perhaps the most unique and mysterious of them is their mesmerizingly beautiful singing, writes the Daily Mail. And scientists finally know how they do it.

The secret lies in a unique voice box that vibrates fat and muscle to produce sounds instead of forcing air through it.

Singing underwater poses a challenge because, in theory, it would require all your air.

But according to a new study by an international team of scientists, whales have evolved a vocal apparatus that is different from that of most other mammals. It also provides insight into the whales’ limited vocal range, which may leave them vulnerable to their sounds being drowned out by ship engines and other human noise.

It has even been observed that whales learn complex songs from each other, notes the Daily Mail.

The new study is small, involving just three whales, but it is the first to answer the question of how the songs of the world’s largest animals can travel for miles across the ocean. Until now, scientists did not know exactly how these ocean giants could accomplish their crowning feat, the Daily Mail emphasizes.

The study was published in the journal Nature. The untimely death of three whales has given scientists an opportunity to study the anatomy of the animals’ voices. The dead whales used in the study died either from natural causes or accidents, the scientists behind the study wrote. Thus, a male sea whale was found near Denmark, and although the cause of his death was unknown, scientists described him as emaciated. A female humpback whale likely drowned after becoming entangled in fishing gear, and a female minke whale likely died from a bacterial infection, the researchers wrote. All of these whales are baleen whales, as opposed to toothed whales. Baleen whales feed by filtering water through giant comb-like plates that trap marine invertebrates and small fish.

To find out how whales make sounds, a team led by Koen Elemans of the University of Southern Denmark dissected each animal’s larynx and blew air through it to see what happened. They discovered that the whale’s vocal apparatus works differently than the vocal cords.

Instead, a U-shaped piece of tissue vibrates against the fat and muscle structures in the whale’s throat. Blowing air through these structures in the laboratory produced the deep, resonant sounds that whales are famous for.

And its unique anatomy allows whales to process air while singing, and also avoid inhaling water.

It was “super exciting” to find out, Cohen Elemans told BBC News.

“This is the most comprehensive and significant study to date of how baleen whales make sounds, a long-standing mystery in the field,” Jeremy Goldbogen tells the AP. Goldbogen, an assistant professor of ocean sciences at Stanford University, was not involved in the study.

These results open the door for future research, he said, “given the extraordinarily diverse acoustic repertoire” of whales.

Unfortunately, the study also shows how vulnerable animals are to human activity, the Daily Mail notes.

Computer analysis of vocal patterns has shown that there is a narrow frequency range of sounds that whales can make, making them vulnerable to disturbance. Because ships and other human activity produce noise that is in the same range as whale song, and because whales use their songs to find mates, human activity can make it more difficult for whales to find each other and reproduce.

“They can’t just choose to sing louder, for example, to avoid the noise we make in the ocean,” says Cohen Elemans.

And while this may not be as much of a problem for humpback whales and other group-living species, blue whales that travel long distances alone may be more vulnerable to human shipping and other activities that produce underwater noise.