The World's Largest Animal Has a Secret Lingo - Here's What It Sounds Like
Blue whales are impressive creatures. Stretching up to 90 feet long and weighing over 300,000 pounds, these gentle giants often migrate hundreds of miles between their summer feeding grounds and winter breeding grounds.
Blue whales are impressive creatures. Stretching up to 90 feet long and weighing over 300,000 pounds, these gentle giants often migrate hundreds of miles between their summer feeding grounds and winter breeding grounds. It’s no surprise, then, that the whales are pros at long distance communication, producing calls that can be heard up to 1,000 miles away.
Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institution (MBARI) and Stanford University are studying those calls to gain insight into how blue whales live and hopefully, how we can better protect them. It turns out these creatures have an entire language - four different types of calls creatively named A, B, C, and D calls - that researchers can listen to by sticking microphones on the seafloor or on the backs of the animals.
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