Blue Whales Can Carry a Tune: “Always Calling At The Exact Same Pitch”

Adult Blue Whale

It has been discovered that Blue whales are actually able to effectively tune the pitch of their calls with an astounding amount of accuracy, and are able to repeat this process call after call. This discovery was made during a recent study of the Blue whale population in the North Pacific. The results of this study were recently published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

The authors of the article have hinted that this control in the pitch of their calls could allow them to find a potential mate by simply swimming toward or away from the call.

“Blue whales in a given population have been observed to align their pitch to a common value, but we have now been able to determine just how accurately they are able to do so,” explained professor of Physics at San Francisco State University, Roger Bland.

Professor Bland along with colleagues have analyzed the recordings of over 4,000 Blue whale calls, their focus being the B calls – Those long sad sounding moans that manifest themselves in the second half of the Blue whale song that is distinct in the North Pacific population of Blue whales.

“We found that blue whales are capable of very fine control over the pitch of their call — both in reproducing their call at the same pitch every time and in synchronizing their pitch with others,” Bland went on to explain.

This just goes to show you that humans aren’t the only creatures on the face of the planet that are capable of amazing things… We should pay more attention to nature, we might actually learn something.