It is one of Earth’s most haunting sounds — the “singing” of baleen whales like the humpback, heard over vast distances in the watery realm. Now scientists have finally figured out how these filter-feeding marine mammals do it.
Baleen whales — a group that includes the blue whale, the largest animal in Earth’s history — use a larynx, or voice box, anatomically modified to enable underwater vocalisation, researchers said on February 21. They have evolved a novel structure — a cushion consisting of fat and muscle that sits inside the larynx, the researchers said.
That means baleen whales make their sounds with their larynx, as do humans, while toothed whales — including dolphins, porpoises, killer whales and sperm whales — evolved a different mechanism employing a special organ in their nasal passages.
