Study finds southern Indian Ocean humpbacks singing different tunes

Resource: http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2012/02/01/study_finds_southern_indian_ocean_humpbacks_singing_different_tunes.html Summary: Researchers have recently been looking at Humpback whales in the southern Indian Ocean and have realized that those Humpback whales have completely different songs. Most whales have the same type of theme, like in Madagascar and Australia, but these whales have completly different tunes. They believe that it could be from other whales in the Atlantic and South Pacific Oceans indicating an exchange of individuals between oceans, but that is very odd to them. Usually the males sing the songs and are generally of the same theme, consisting of wails, moans and shrieks for about 30 minutes. They did this during migrating season because thats usually when individual males usually travel to different breeding grounds. When these researchers where there they heard 19 individual whale songs and only 1 out of 19 songs sounded of the same theme, every other sounded completly different. They don't really understand exactly why just yet but they are going to keep looking and listening till they find out more information. Crtitique: This article was very interesting and I had no clue that whales sang also, but it was a good article. I just wanted them to tell why it is so important if whales have different tunes, and what it means. Impact: If the fact of whales having different songs that they sing then that could either be, good, bad or not that big of a deal. Until someone finds out why it is such a big deal, then there really is no impact in this article.