Beastfile · Marine Life

Humpback Whale

Megaptera novaeangliae

Every male in an ocean sings the same song, and the song changes together.

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Overview

Humpbacks are the whales people know by sound. Males sing long structured songs that run for many minutes and repeat for hours, and the remarkable part is that every male in a population sings essentially the same song at the same time. The song changes across a season, everyone adopts the changes, and new versions spread from one population to the next across an entire ocean basin, which is cultural transmission on a scale nothing else in the sea matches. They also feed by blowing a spiral of bubbles to corral fish into a column, then lunging up through the middle with their mouths open, and they migrate further than almost any mammal.

A humpback whale tail fluke raised above the water before a dive

Origin

Every major ocean. They feed in cold polar and temperate water in summer and migrate to warm tropical water to breed and calve.

Habitat

Ocean

Notable Traits

•Population-wide song that changes and spreads between oceans
•Bubble-net feeding, often in coordinated groups
•Flippers up to a third of body length, the longest of any whale
•Individually identifiable by the pattern on the tail fluke
•Migrations among the longest of any mammal

Conservation

Least Concern, and one of the genuine conservation successes. Commercial whaling cut some populations to a few percent of their original numbers, and most have rebuilt substantially since protection.