thegirlwiththefinchertattoo:
ttssgg:
scoldylox:
thisismymonkey:
The Loneliest Whale in the World.
In 2004, The New York Times wrote an article about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem:
She isn’t like any other baleen whale. Unlike all other whales, she doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn’t have a lover. She never had one. Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25hz, she sings at 52hz. You see, that’s precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And, with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by.
This makes me get teary EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.
I want to hug the whale. :C
My face just crumbled. That is tragic.
Oh no, this is just so awful. Tearing up right now, no lie.
The loneliest whale, a filter feeder like the whale in Finding Nemo, has roamed the oceans possibly looking for friends but instead caught the attention of the U.S. Navy in 1989 when their instruments picked up its odd frequency. Calling away at 52 Hertz (the unit of frequency), the unknown whale stood out because other filter feeders call between 15 and 25 Hertz. Its filter-feeding brethren, like the blue whale, use frequencies like those of the lowest notes on a piano, while this whale uses a frequency that’s about eight notes higher. As you can hear at the linked recordings, the 52-Hertz whale also calls in a distinctly more rapid rhythm compared to the deeper and more languid blue whale song.
Not only is the 52-Hertz whale off frequency, it’s off track. Scientists, easily able to follow its movements for years thanks to its unique call, can’t match the whale’s migration path to that of any known filter-feeding whales.
No one knows why the loneliest whale in the world has this communication and navigational disability. It could be a hybrid of two different filter-feeding species, forging a unique song and path that no whale has used before. A cryptozoologist has suggested that the 52-Hertz whale could even be lonelier than we realize, the last survivor of an unidentified species, plying the oceans in a doomed search for another of its kind, singing its broken song.
—
It’s possible this whale is the last of it’s kind and when it dies the world will never see another like it.
POST DETAILS:
Posted on
February/29/2012
Originally Posted by:
erickimberlinbowley Reblogged From:
kas-elakh
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