According to speech language pathologists, the southern drawl and Pittsburgh’s famous “yunz” may, very soon, be gone. Meanwhile, WHALE accents are getting MORE distinctive (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show). When they dive together, sperm whales make patterns of clicks to each other known as "codas."
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Researchers who listen to whale "songs" (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show) have discovered that each whale has his or her own individual "tag" by which they can be identified. Sometimes they communicate as pods (or social units) or families. On the Daily Galaxy website, Casey Kazan quotes biologist Hal Whitehead as saying, "Whale cultures are in their minds and not in the things that they made. Whale culture has, like human culture, a range of types and styles. These songs evolve, so that at the beginning of the breeding season they’re all singing one song and then it’s changed a bit by the end.read more
People are polluted and whales are too. Sperm whales throughout the Pacific carry evidence of exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which occur in oil, coal, and tar deposits, and are produced as byproducts of fuel burning. Some of them are carcinogenic, and high levels of PAHs are found in meat cooked at high temperatures (such as grilling or barbecuing), as well as in smoked fish.
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Did they survive the oil spill? – Here’s a mystery that needs to be solved: What effect has the BP oil spill had on whales? Now “electronic ears” are being put in place in the Gulf of Mexico, listening in on whales that cruise the waters to learn where they are, how many there are and how they are faring since massive amounts of oil were released into their environment.
Researchers are now placing the final seven of 22 “marine autonomous recording units” in the Gulf. The goal is to document the state of the sounds in the ecosystem over an extended period of time. Biologist Christopher Clark says, “Night after night, on TV and on webcams, we saw oil spewing from the bottom of the ocean. You wonder,
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