Why Whales Sing

About this book

Reconceives whale songs as a sophisticated sonar system, revealing incredible insights into these creatures' intelligence and behaviour.

With breathtaking complexity and haunting beauty, the songs of whales have long fascinated scientists. Whales are the only mammals that sing continuously for ten hours or more, and they do so loudly, even when no listeners are nearby. They also change the songs they sing every year. In Why Whales Sing, bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding of these enigmatic sounds and proposes a groundbreaking theory that challenges decades of established science.

Fifty years of field research have led most scientists to conclude that humpback whales sing for the same reason that birds do: to advertise their sexual fitness. But if whale songs are nothing more than tools of attraction, why do whales sing even when they're alone? In light of modern advances in neuroscience and ocean acoustics, Mercado reaches the surprising conclusion that whales may not actually be "singing", but rather engaging in an activity more commonly associated with dolphins and bats – echolocating – which enables them to see their world with sound. By incessantly streaming sounds while listening closely to the returning echoes, whales may be actively tuning their brains in ways that allow them to monitor the movements of silent whales located miles away.

Sophisticated, long-range sonar can enable whales to perceive their vast underwater worlds in unimaginable ways. From the military origins of whale song recordings to the persistent mysteries of cetacean communication, Why Whales Sing displays the wonder of whales and reshapes how we view their intelligence, behaviour, and acoustic mastery.

Contents

Prologue
1. Why Whales Sing
2. When Whales Sing
3. Which Whales Sing
4. Where Whales Sing
5. What Whales Sing
6. How Whales Sing
7. Who Hears What
8. For Whom the Whales Toll
9. Within Whales' Heads
10. Will Whales Sing?

Acknowledgments
Appendix: Essentials of Echolocation
Further Reading

Customer Reviews

Biography

Eduardo Mercado III is a professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo, SUNY, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of Principles of Cognition: Finding Minds, and coauthor of Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior.