singing animals.
Beautiful due to quality and range of the sounds, and beguiling due to their complexity and the complicated reasons animals sing them.
And perhaps no singing animals have fascinated us more than the great whales.
Bowhead whales are unique among all other whales in that they change their songs within and between years
The songs of humpback or blue whales remain the most well known, but new research is helping to confirm that an even more impressive songster swims, and sings among them.
The bowhead whale has the most impressive repertoire of all whales, and scientists have just recorded 12 unique songs being sung by bowhead whales on their annual migration.
The discovery reveals more about how these enigmatic creatures, which spend much of their lives swimming under thick Arctic sea ice, communicate.
It's a mysterious, musical world under the Arctic ice (Credit: Kate Stafford)
It's a mysterious, musical world under the Arctic ice (Credit: Kate Stafford)
The new research focused on one population of bowhead whales on their annual spring migration along along the west coast of Alaska.
The researchers recorded more unique songs (listen below) during this period of migration than has ever been observed before in this group, which belong to the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort population, the biggest of four geographically isolated populations.