Humpback whales sing increasingly complex songs, but University of Queensland researchers have discovered they may suddenly switch to something simpler, in a ‘cultural revolution’. 
 
 The study examined the structure and complexity of songs sung by the eastern Australian humpback whale population over 13 consecutive years. 
 
 Dr Jenny Allen from UQ’s Cetacean Ecology and Acoustics Laboratory said members of humpback whale populations were known to sing the same song at any one time. 
 
 “Typically, these songs changed gradually, possibly through embellishments by individual singers,” Dr Allen said. 
 
 “We suspect the embellishments allow bulls to stand out from their peers, much like teenage boys trying to stand out from the crowd. 
 
 “But every few years the songs are replaced – always by something simpler - suggesting there is a limit to the whales’ capacity to learn new material.” 
 
 Dr Allen said humpback whales provided a good model for cultural learning in animals, as they learned and spread their songs quickly over entire populations and even ocean basins. 
 
 “This is cultural transmission on a scale comparable to what we find in people,” she said. 
 
 “By learning more about culture and social learning in animal species such as humpback whales, we can gain a better understanding of what led to its development, and what evolutionary value it holds. 
 
 “By answering these questions in animals, we might be able to clarify why cultural and social development has occurred to such a unique degree in humans.” 
 
 The study is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 
 
 Media: Dr Jenny Allen, j.allen3@uq.edu.au, +61 424 773 994; Dominic Jarvis, dominic.jarvis@uq.edu.au, +61 413 334 924. ||||| Humpback whale songs undergo a ‘cultural revolution’ every few years 
 
 Like any fad, the songs of humpback whales don’t stick around for long. Every few years, males swap their chorus of squeaks and groans for a brand new one. Now, scientists have figured out how these “cultural revolutions” take place. 
 
 All male humpbacks in a population sing the same song, and they appear to learn new ones somewhat like people do. Males in the eastern Australian population of humpbacks, for example, pick up a new song every few years from the western Australian population at shared feeding grounds or while migrating. Over the next few years, the songs spread to all South Pacific populations. 
 
 To understand how the whales learn the novel ballads, scientists analyzed eastern Australian whale songs over 13 consecutive years. Using spectrograms of 412 song cycles from 95 singers, the scientists scored each tune’s complexity for the number of sounds and themes, and studied the subtle variations individual males can add to stand out. Complexity increased as the songs evolved (as heard in the video below), the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B . But after a song revolution, the ballads became shorter with fewer sounds and themes. 
 
 The revolutionary songs may be less complex than the old ones because the whales can only learn a certain amount of new material at a time, the scientists conclude. That could mean that although humpback whales are still the crooners of the sea, their learning skills are a bit limited.
– Researchers studying the songs of humpback whales have discovered a quirk of the undersea music: The whales sing the same song for a few years, adding individual embellishments and making it increasingly complex all the while. And then, poof, they switch to a simpler tune and start the cycle over again. In fact, lead researcher Jenny Allen of the University of Queensland refers to this switch as a "cultural revolution" in a UQ news release. So why the abrupt change to a new tune? One theory is that the songs become so complex that the whales reach their limit of being able to learn new material, according to the study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The researchers studied 412 song cycles from 95 singing whales over 13 years, per Science. While the whales generally sing the same song, the researchers found that individuals add their own touches, perhaps to help them stand out. (Only the males sing.) Another part of the pattern: Whale populations sometimes pick up a new tune from a different population—such as when eastern Australian humpbacks meet their western counterparts at a common feeding ground. Smithsonian likens this to a game of whale "telephone." But the same pattern follows: The songs begin simple and grow more complex until they're ditched altogether for a new one. (A beached whale provided unfortunate proof of plastic pollution in the sea.)