This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Jason Goldman.

Male humpback whales are the concert singers of the marine world.

These ocean giants belt out tunes that can be heard perhaps hundreds of miles away.

The songs attract friends and lovers and maybe keep rivals at bay.

And now we learn that Humpbacks in different ocean basins, the South Atlantic and the Indian,

on opposite sides of the African continent share melodies.

The songs are certainly learnt between individuals,

so it's thought to be the best example of horizontal cultural

transmission, so from peer to peer rather than from parent to offspring.

Melinda Wreckdahl, marine conservation scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society's Ocean Giants program.

The International Whaling Commission has identified seven distinct humpback whale breeding

populations in the southern hemisphere. These are whales that meet up in the same warm tropical

waters each year to mate and give birth.

But when mating season is over, the whales migrate to the chilly polar regions to

Gorge on Krill. Using genetics and photographic surveys of migrating humpbacks, researchers know that males

in these colder feeding areas interact with other males from different breeding populations.

But scientists did not know that this meetup provides the whales with the opportunity to have

vocal jam sessions, where they trade melodies.

And the amount of song overlap between the whales that breed off of Gabon in the Atlantic,

and those that breed near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean varies year to year.

That's according to a study of more than 1,500 individual sounds that were recorded between 2001 and 2005.

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