A new study on whale voice boxes shows how they can produce such complex sounds. But naturally, there are limitations to how loudly they can sing and the implications of this are vast for our own existence on Earth. How whale song and human survival are connected is a fascinating journey through the complexity of life that I cover in my book Wildlife in the Balance.
If we threaten the structural integrity of the soundscapeThe characteristic of a landscape of sounds that is interpreted by animal minds and dictates their behaviour and response to other animals and features of the environment. More it’s like moving the television into the office or the dishwasher into the living room. The complex acoustic scaffolding that wildlife produces is critical to ecosystem function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More. Animals are building rooms for themselves … we might call these ‘territories’. These are places where they can live in peace, and if we upset this, we destroy the ambience, increase anxiety and create conflict.
Quote from Wildlife in the Balance.
Communication between animals makes culture more stable
The language between animals like whales is not one we can understand. But we don’t need to. Culture is developed exactly the same way as ours through communication between individuals and societies. This ultimately leads to a balancing of ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More and the services on which we have built human civilization for the last few hundred years.
At the end of the day we are just another animal and our basic needs are clean air, water and food. The systems of noisy transport we create are not, of themselves, an evolutionary stable strategyAn evolutionary stable strategy is individual behaviour that, when scaled to the population-level, means that population is relatively stable. As long as the outside environment remains in a steady stable-state, evolutionary stable strategies result in no net loss or gain in the species’ status. A species that exhibits these traits is expected to survive longest. More as they don’t make the essential life support we need. We still depend on having animals as part of that ecosystem.
This is how whale song and human survival are connected. It’s why we cannot afford to allow whales not to hear each other … without this, we cannot survive.
Whales create a better climate for living
Sperm whales are the only species with individuals with that have a biologically world-wide home-range. Their entire life is spent listening for food and they would once have had a profound impact on our climate. Climate is simply the end-point of a system where energy is otherwise absorbed into providing food, clean air and water. Natural climate systems are built by animals.
Blue whales too, have a huge impact on our weather systems. They make the difference between bush fires and floods in Australia.
Sperm whales are among the world’s biggest (also in terms of body size) amplifiers and transporters of nutrientsEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More in the oceans, but have declined by as much as eighty per cent from pre-whaling numbers of 1.1 million animals. They are among the largest creatures to have ever lived and are the only animals that regard the whole of the world as their home range.
Quote from Wildlife in the Balance.
It’s one of the many reasons why the strapline of my book is ‘animals are humanity’s best hope’.
