Study
Dynamic Horizontal Cultural Transmission of Humpback Whale Song at the Ocean Basin Scale
Garland, E. C.; Goldizen, A. W.; Rekdahl, M. L.; Constantine, R.; Garrigue, C.; Hauser, N. D.; Poole, M. M.; Robbins, J.; Noad, M. J.
Current Biology, 2011
Song types were classified across six humpback populations spanning thousands of kilometres of the South Pacific over about a decade, and the timing of each song type’s appearance in each population was compared.
- Studied in
- Megaptera novaeangliae
- Sample size
- songs from six populations across the western and central South Pacific over a decade
Song types repeatedly appeared first off eastern Australia and then swept eastward across the Pacific, population by population, taking a year or two to cross the ocean.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Humpback song undergoes repeated, directional cultural transmission at an ocean-basin scale.
How NatureHQ reads it
The Noad result showed one replacement; this showed it is a system. Songs move in a consistent direction across an ocean, arriving later the further east you look, which is what a wave of transmission looks like and is not what independent invention looks like. It remains a description of how a behaviour spreads rather than of what it is for, and the two are easy to conflate when the behaviour is as striking as this one.
- Sampling effort differs substantially between populations.
- Where whales actually hear each other’s songs — on migration, on shared feeding grounds — is inferred rather than observed.
- The function of song is still not established, so the direction of spread cannot be explained in functional terms.
Following one whale song across an ocean
Is a population’s song replaced by chance, or does the same song travel between populations in a consistent direction?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Cell PressPublished in a Cell Press journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.019
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-31.