Reconceives whale songs as a sophisticated sonar system, revealing incredible insights into these creatures intelligence and behavior.
With breathtaking complexity and haunting beauty, the songs of whales have long fascinated scientists. Whales are the only mammals that can sing continuously for ten hours or more, changing the unique songs they sing every year. In Why Whales Sing, bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding of these enigmatic sounds and proposes a groundbreaking theory that challenges decades of established science.
Fifty years of field research have led most scientists to conclude that humpback whales sing for the same reason that birds do: to advertise their sexual fitness. But if whale songs are nothing more than tools of attraction, why do whales sing even when theyre alone and there are no listeners nearby? In light of modern advances in neuroscience and ocean acoustics, Mercado reaches the surprising conclusion that whales may not actually be "singing," but rather engaging in an activity more commonly associated with dolphins and bats—echolocating—which enables them to see their world with sound. By incessantly streaming sounds while listening closely to the returning echoes, whales may be actively tuning their brains in ways that allow them to monitor the movements of silent whales located miles away.
Sophisticated, long-range sonar can enable whales to perceive their vast underwater worlds in unimaginable ways. From the military origins of whale song recordings to the persistent mysteries of cetacean communication, this book displays the wonder of whales and reshapes how we view their intelligence, behavior, and acoustic mastery.
Eduardo Mercado III is a professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo, SUNY, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of Principles of Cognition: Finding Minds, and coauthor of Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior.
Table of Contents Prologue 1. Why Whales Sing 2. When Whales Sing 3. Which Whales Sing 4. Where Whales Sing 5. What Whales Sing 6. How Whales Sing 7. Who Hears What 8. For Whom the Whales Toll 9. Within Whales Heads 10. Will Whales Sing? Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix: Essentials of Echolocation Further Reading
Reconceives whale songs as a sophisticated sonar system, revealing incredible insights into these creatures intelligence and behavior.
Mercado casts Why Whales Sing as a competition between two hypotheses about whale songs—sonar versus mate attraction—but the books broader message is that unless humans stop degrading and destroying these mammals habitat, we risk losing not only any chance of understanding their behavior but also a precious animal society.
—Irene M. Pepperberg, Boston University
An accessible and charismatic account of Mercados quixotic quest to find love for his controversial hypothesis about the function of whale song. You neednt be convinced by his well-articulated and passionately defended argument (although you might well be) to nonetheless be thoroughly charmed by this book.
—Justin Gregg, author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity
In Why Whales Sing, Eduardo Mercado takes us inside the minds of the most majestic animals on Earth. Challenging decades of assumptions about whalesong, Mercado serves up a new framework for understanding these mysterious creatures.
—Gregory Berns, author of What Its Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience
Creative, provocative, and full of wonder. Mercado leads us not only into the marvels of whale sounds, but brings to vivid life the process of scientific exploration and discovery.
—David George Haskell, Pulitzer-finalist author of Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolutions Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction
Creative, provocative, and full of wonder. Mercado leads us not only into the marvels of whale sounds, but brings to vivid life the process of scientific exploration and discovery.
—David George Haskell, Pulitzer-finalist author of Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolutions Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction
