From: Ian Goddard (igoddard@erols.com)
Date: Wed Apr 29 1998 - 08:53:23 MDT
At 03:56 AM 4/29/98 -0700, you wrote:
>herMAJ [mishaj@cats.ucsc.edu] wrote:
>> Perhaps whales are
>>attempting to do just that-- only instead of binary digits they're
>>singing us an "image" and cant for the life of them figure out why we
>>haven't responded...
>
>There was an interesting documentary on TV a couple of years ago about a
>group of scientists who were given the old US Navy underwater listening
>network for a few months before it was shut down. Amongst other things
>they used it to track and listen to whales around the world, and one of
>the tentative conclusions they reached was that the 'songs' were long-range
>sonar for navigation in the deep ocean; because of the inversion layer
>they could potentially image the entire ocean and the differing 'songs'
>allowed them to distinguish their returns from other whales. Wish I'd
>taped it, but I didn't realise how interesting it would be until afterwards.
IAN: And the identity-union between Navy
sonar and whale sonar may be causeing many
whales to be driven off course, "crashing,"
or beeching, onto the land. The low down:
http://www.abcnews.com/sections/science/DailyNews/whales0305.html
SCIENCE NEWS, Vol.153 (03/21/98) page 184.
Whales Stranded During Military Test
A puzzling episode of whale strandings along the western
coast of Greece might have resulted from military tests of
sonar going on at the time, speculates a Greek researcher.
On May 12 and 13, 1996, 12 Cuvier's beaked whales ran
aground along the Kyparissiakos Gulf, where they eventually
died. Two weeks later, another dead whale was discovered
on the same stretch of coast.
More: http://expage.com/page/new02
>Personally I find the idea of animals who can 'see' an entire ocean far
>more impressive than the idea of animals singing to each other, but I
>guess it takes all sorts...
IAN: It's got to be sentimental and romantic.
Really the whale songs are saying: "This Helps
me to find the place I initiate the wholesale
slaughter of a lot of entities smaller than me."
****************************************************************
VISIT Ian Williams Goddard ----> http://www.erols.com/igoddard
________________________________________________________________
ART: THE JOY OF SEEING --> http://www.erols.com/igoddard/art.htm
________________________________________________________________
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:00 MST