Why whales sing like Britney Spears, Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger

According to a study, whales find it helpful to sing like Mick Jagger and Britney Spears while hunting to help them find, track and capture their prey.

In a landmark discovery, scientists have discovered that sperm whales, dolphins, porpoises and other toothed whales use a human-like vocal technique known as “vocal fry” that was critical to their evolution and survival.

So named because it sounds like sizzling bacon, the vocal roast is most often associated with the slow voices of American celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Scarlet Johansson and Katy Perry.

But the deeper creaky voice resulting from the stretching of some syllables while moving in the lower register is a characteristic feature of the singing voice.

It has been regularly used by everyone from Mick Jagger to Britney Spears to convey a sense of depth, intensity of emotion and empathy, as in the opening lines of “Street Fighting Man” and “…Baby One More Time” respectively. .

Janis Joplin, Lady Gaga, and Nirvana vocalist Kurt Cobain are other notable proponents of this form.

Vocal roasting involves lowering the voice to the lowest natural register, which changes the nature of the joint vibration of the human vocal cords. These changes create inconsistencies in vibrations and give a subtle discontinuity or crackle to the speaker’s voice.

This method also underlies the hunting songs of 73 species of toothed whales, collectively known as odontocetes, which they use to find their prey using echolocation.

They use this technique to reflect sound waves up to two kilometers below the waves in the dark in order to track down their prey.

The lower frequency of the lower pitch of the vocal brood is conducive to better hunting as their longer wavelength and greater energy allow them to travel farther.

Other toothed whales include the beaked whale, killer whale and vaquita, as well as the narwhal.

While many people find the vocal roast in human speech shocking, while others find the deeper sound compelling, and still others find the technique used in singing somewhat overkill, toothed whales’ pitch is an unqualified success, according to a study by to the magazine The sciencepresented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington on Thursday.

“Voice fry give whales access to one of the richest food niches on earth – the deep oceans,” says Professor Peter Madsen of Aarhus University in Denmark.

“While the voice of fry can be controversial in humans, ranging in perception from annoying to authoritarian, it has undoubtedly made toothed whales an evolutionary success story,” he said.

When using Vocal Fry, the vocal cords are only open for a very short time, meaning that the animals require very little air to breathe.

“This air saving makes it especially ideal for echolocation. During deep dives, all the air is compressed to a small fraction of its volume at the surface,” said Professor Madsen.

Andrea Ravignani of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the study, said: “This study shows that toothed whales can demonstrate exceptional vocal abilities by diving to depths of 1,000 meters and eating seafood. At least in words people are not so special.

When toothed whales hunt in deep and murky waters, they produce short, powerful ultrasonic echolocation clicks at up to 700 clicks per second to locate, track and capture prey.

The discovery that toothed whales use a song baking technique is part of a larger study that showed that, like humans, these animals have at least three vocal registers: the voice register, which produces the lowest sounds, and the chest register. which is comparable to ours. the normal spoken voice and the Falset register which produces even higher frequencies.

Overall, the researchers show that toothed whales have a wide human-like vocal range, with three distinct vocal registers, just like humans.

Previously, only humans and crows were found to have different vocal registers, a range of tones produced by a specific vibrational pattern of the vocal cords.

Toothed whales use the upper two registers to produce various pulses and whistles to communicate with their peers, while the lower register is used for hunting.

Registers are important because they allow toothed whales to deliver a variety of emotional and complex speech in higher registers at high frequency, as well as to blow very loudly at much lower frequencies at five times the volume of a trumpeter, making them the loudest sound. every animal on the planet and without harm to their lungs.

Toothed whales can produce an acoustically rich array of grunts, bursts and whistles used to compose complex vocalizations used for social communication.

Vocal Fry isn’t just for celebrities; all people use it to one degree or another. And it’s not just women who use it in their conversational voice, though it’s thought to be more noticeable then, as men tend to have a lower tone.

While this technique is used to enhance the feel of songs, it is not clear why some people have more husky voices than others.

One theory is that lowering the tone is a sign of empowerment, so people with this voice quality may unconsciously signal their sense of personal power. Another hypothesis comes to the opposite conclusion: vocal reverie is a sign of anxiety and stress tightening the larynx.