Two Ig Nobel Prize winners and some of their colleagues collaborated in a discovery about how some whales are able to communicate. A report from the University of Southern Denmark announces it:
Baleen whales evolved a unique larynx to communicate but cannot escape human noise
Baleen whales are the largest animals to have ever roamed our planet and as top predators play a vital role in marine ecosystems. To communicate across vast distances and find each other, baleen whales depend critically on the production of sounds that travels far in murky and dark oceans.
However, since whale songs were first discovered more than 50 years ago, it remained unknown how baleen whales produce their complex vocalizations – until now.
A new study in the prestigious journal Nature, reports that baleen whales evolved unique structures in their larynx that enable their low-frequency vocalizations, but also limit their communication range….
The new study
The study is: “Evolutionary Novelties Underlie Sound Production in Baleen Whales,” Coen P. H. Elemans, Weili Jiang, Mikkel H. Jensen, Helena Pichler, Bo R. Mussman, Jacob Nattestad, Magnus Wahlberg, Xudong Zheng, Qian Xue, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, Nature, epub 2024.
Two Ig Nobel Prizes
Co-author Magnus Wahlberg and a colleague were awarded the 2004 Ig Nobel Biology Prize for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting. [That research, done independently by two different groups, is documented in two studies. “Sounds Produced by Herring (Clupea harengus) Bubble Release,” Magnus Wahlberg and Håkan Westerberg, Aquatic Living Resources, vol. 16, 2003, pp. 271-5. “Pacific and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds,” Ben Wilson, Robert S. Batty and Lawrence M. Dill, Biology Letters, vol. 271, 2003, pp. S95-S97.]
Co-author W. Tecumseh Fitch and colleagues were awarded the 2020 Ig Nobel Acoustics Prize for for inducing a female Chinese alligator to bellow in an airtight chamber filled with helium-enriched air. [That research is documented in the study “A Chinese Alligator in Heliox: Formant Frequencies in a Crocodilian,” Stephan A. Reber, Takeshi Nishimura, Judith Janisch, Mark Robertson, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 218, 2015, pp. 2442-2447.]
Bonus Info on Earlier Discoveries About (1) Herring Farts and (2) Alligators Bellowing in Helium
In this video (below), Magnus Whalberg reveals the once top-secret aspect of his Ig Nobel Prize-winning work. the video is titled “How herring farts almost lead to a diplomatic crisis“:
In this video (below), the Reuters wire service shows and tells about the Ig Nobel Prize winning work of Tecumseh Fitch and colleagues. The report is called “This is what an alligator on helium sounds like“: