Mondo Knows Facts

Humpback whales rewrite their song every year

All males in a population sing the same version, and it evolves over months Songs run for ten to twenty minutes and repeat in cycles for hours. Whales in one ocean share a version that drifts as new phrases are added and others dropped. Populations on the other side of the world sing different songs. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Humpback whales rewrite their song every year, photograph
Christopher.Michel ยท CC BY 2.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

NOAA Fisheries

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Tags: whales, song, culture

Humpback whales rewrite their song every year: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
All males in a population sing the same version, and it evolves over months. The figure is taken from NOAA Fisheries, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a animals fact?
Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.