Posted on 12/08/2004 11:18:53 AM PST by mattdono
LONDON (Reuters) - A lone whale, with a voice unlike any other, has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years, American marine biologists said Wednesday.
Using signals recorded by the US navy to track submarines, they traced the movement of whales in the Northern Pacific and found that a lone whale singing at a frequency of around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean since 1992.
Its calls, despite being clearly those of a baleen, do not match those of any known species of whale, which usually call at frequencies of between 15 and 20 hertz.
The mammal does not follow the migration patterns of any other species either, according to team leader Mary Anne Daher.
The calls of the whale, which roams the ocean every autumn and winter, have deepened slightly as a result of aging, but are still recognizable.
The study by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, appears in the New Scientist magazine.
.45MAN and I will send you the bill for our respective ROFL hernias!
We spend millions listening to whales sing so that we know what ISN'T a whale out there.
I do - I love stories like this. I also appreciate the black humor.
Aren't you even a little bit curious about the world around you?
I don't want to be a Freeper if I cannot enjoy the wonders of the earth I was born on.
As a former squid involved with early SOSUS, you're 100% correct
Individualists unite!
That "Bloop" sounds like an underwater flatulant emmission! (See Camle's post for possible suspect)
bttt
bttp
What is this, the Mike Tyson of Whales?
For the first time, scientists have both witnessed and photographed a whale gas bubble, suggesting that flatulence is just as common for ocean mammals as it is for humans and many other terrestrial animals.
The picture is best described by Nick Gales, principal research scientist in the Applied Marine Mammal Ecology Group of the Australian Antarctic Division in Tasmania. Gales was leading an expedition of the Charolotte Pass between Marguerite Bay and Palmer Station, Antarctica, when the ship's captain, Joe Borkowski III, took the photo.
"The picture is of an Antarctic minke whale taken from the bow of a ship," Gales explained. "The white bits in the photo are pieces of ice-floe, the stream of pinky color behind the whale is a fecal plume a.k.a. "poo" the large circle in the water is indeed the physical eruption of the whale's flatulence."
,,, too late Muttly, too late! We do lunch on Thursdays and I've taught it a song already.
Mmmm. Whale, it's what's for dinner!
You have such a lush social life......
Loch Ness Monster?
,,, it's much like politics. If it's below the surface...
great headline!
Hillay has been somewhat quiet lately.
And she is a strange voiced mammal(Barely mammal).
Janet Reno is also strange voiced, and Madelaine Albright is also missing..
A whole pod of them?
"The Whale Who Sang Grand Opera", a Disney cartoon from the Thirties that featured Nelson Eddy as the voice of the whale.
Reminds me of the Far Side cartoon with the whale singing "Louie, Louie" into the researcher's microphone.
Unfortunately our ever tasteful moderator has removed post #26, but what a woderful image it was while it lasted. Gave a new dimension to "Thar She Blows". Thanks camle.
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