"The song of the blue whale, one of the eeriest sounds in the ocean, has mysteriously grown deeper. The calls have been steadily dropping in frequency for seven populations of blue whales around the world over the past 40 years... the songs, which they believe are by males advertising for mates, had lowered by as much as 30 percent in certain populations...
...the drop might signal a rebound in the population of blue whales since commercial whaling bans began to take effect in the 1970s.... Female blue whales choose their mates based on size, a selection process that has fostered the species’ gargantuan proportions. And deeper might signal bigger. When populations were smaller, whales may have had to be louder to make their calls heard. Now, the males might be competing to make their calls deeper...
...there are up to 25,000 blue whales, compared with perhaps 300,000 before whaling. The number may have risen from a low of about 10,000 animals."
From the New York Times, which also has an audio comparison of previous and current songs. The implication that this change is a result of population growth is amazingly good news.
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