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Science Quickly

Right Whales Seem to Think before They Speak

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2018

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rather than always making the same call in response to the same stimuli, North Atlantic right whales are capable of changing their vocalizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.com.j.

0:23.9

That's y-A-K-U-L-T dot-C-O-J-P.

0:28.4

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.6

This is Scientific Americans' 60-second science.

0:37.5

I'm Jason Goldman.

0:39.3

As animals grow, the sounds they make change.

0:44.1

But some sounds continue to change even after an animal matures.

0:49.1

That's true for humans, and now it turns out to be true for North Atlantic right whales, too.

0:55.0

A member of the Baleen family of whales, the endangered North Atlantic right whales, spend

1:01.0

most of their time along the eastern coast of North America, from Canada's Bay of Fundy, south

1:06.0

of Florida. Syracuse University biologist Holly Root-Gutridge analyzed recordings of whale calls

1:13.1

to see if researchers could use those sounds to identify individual whales. In an audio program

1:18.9

on a computer screen, a call has a particular shape. Staring at these calls all day, I started to notice

1:24.6

they were changing, and then we looked a little bit harder at the data and realized that they weren't just changing

1:30.2

from being a little tiny baby to being and fair-sized adult, but that they kept changing

1:35.4

over time.

1:36.4

Root Gut Regener colleagues rounded up 17 years' worth of whale recordings.

1:40.3

In all, they gathered nearly a thousand calls from 49 individual whales between

1:45.6

the ages of one month and 37 years. Like many other animals, the calls of the infants were

...

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