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Humpback whale sings songs thousands of kilometers away

Imagine standing in Kyiv and singing — and being heard in Paris. Impossible? For us — yes. And for a humpback whale — a normal day in the ocean. These giants sing real songs that echo through the water for 10,000 kilometers — from Ukraine all the way to Australia!

A humpback whale, up to 16 meters long, is like a bus. It weighs up to 30 tons. But the most amazing thing about it is its voice. Male humpbacks compose long melodies from the same repeating motifs: buzzes, groans, high-pitched squeaks and low rumbles. One song can last 30 minutes, and then the whale starts it all over again - and so on for hours! All the whales in one region sing the same "fashionable" song this year, and the next - a new melody appears, like a new hit.

Sound travels four times faster in water than in air. That's why the song of one humpback whale rushes across the ocean and reaches other whales far and wide. That's how they find each other in the boundless sea.

And humpback whales are real acrobats. They jump out of the water with their whole bodies, slap their tails on the surface, and flip in the air. Imagine a thirty-ton creature jumping out of the waves! Scientists still don’t know exactly why they do this—perhaps for joy.

When you're sailing on a ship in the ocean and hear a strange distant hum, listen. It could be the song of a whale traveling through the water column to another whale it's never seen before.