This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intagliata.

In 1964, the Beatles set foot in America and kicked off the British invasion.

But musical revolutions don't occur only in human

culture. They also happen among humpback whales in their songs.

Yeah, I mean it's very much like a fashion or a new type of song that maybe comes from a different country and all of a sudden it's number one and everyone wants to listen to it.

Claire Owen, a marine scientist at the University of St Andrews.

The number one song she's talking about

are the tunes sung by Humpback Wales in the South Pacific,

which Owens team recorded at half a dozen wintering grounds.

Among the recordings, they found several variations on an older theme throughout the region.

But they also found a new more commonly recorded song.

Even though that song was new, it had spread rapidly through multiple whale populations,

replacing the old tune. In other words, it was a hit. And the key to that rapid spread, Owen says,

might be a newly studied hub of Cetacean musical exchange,

the uninhabited Kermedek Islands,

north of New Zealand,

where whales from all over the South Pacific

converge in route to Antarctica. And the search for songs and their information

may be a reason for the convergence. We have whales traveling from the Cook Islands and

making a huge deviation towards the Karmadak Islands on their southerly

migration and so it's yeah certainly opens up that kind of question of why is this so important and what does this learning of the song actually mean to their survival and maybe their reproduction.

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