科学60秒:蓝鲸统一求偶信号
来源：沪江听写酷
2011-05-09 02:00
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Blue whales off the California coast make calls that, sped up 10 times, sound like (sound of two-part call). The original is a wall-rattling frequency too low for us to hear. Scientists analyzed around 2,500 of those calls, and found that the second part (sound) is nearly ___1___ in pitch every time from each whale: 16 hertz, or four octaves below middle C. And the slight ___2___ in frequency that do exist are only a tenth of the difference between a C and a C sharp. Those findings appear online in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
The researchers don't know how many different individual whales they caught singing, or why even they sing at all. But past studies suggest only blue whale males make calls like this. So the investigators speculate that males might ___3___ to a single common pitch as a sort of ___4___.
Thanks to the Doppler effect, females swimming towards a male would hear a slightly higher pitch; swimming away, a lower-pitched moan. Serenade ___5___—you might be swimming solo tonight.
Blue whales off the California coast make calls that, sped up 10 times, sound like (sound of two-part call). The original is a wall-rattling frequency too low for us to hear. Scientists analyzed around 2,500 of those calls, and found that the second part (sound) is nearly ___1___ in pitch every time from each whale: 16 hertz, or four octaves below middle C. And the slight ___2___ in frequency that do exist are only a tenth of the difference between a C and a C sharp. Those findings appear online in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
The researchers don't know how many different individual whales they caught singing, or why even they sing at all. But past studies suggest only blue whale males make calls like this. So the investigators speculate that males might ___3___ to a single common pitch as a sort of ___4___.
Thanks to the Doppler effect, females swimming towards a male would hear a slightly higher pitch; swimming away, a lower-pitched moan. Serenade ___5___—you might be swimming solo tonight.
identical
variations
synchronize
mating beacon
out of tune
加利福尼亚海岸的蓝鲸会发出嘀嘀嘀呜呜呜这样两部分的叫声。当然这是在将其叫声频率提高10倍之后听到的，未处理过的频率过低，人耳是无法听到的。科学家分析了约2500种那样的叫声之后发现，那种每一头鲸鱼发出的呜呜呜的叫声，音高几乎一模一样：16赫兹，比中央C音低4个八度。即使有差异，也是极其微小的，只有C调与升C调之间音高差异的十分之一。《美国声学学报》电子版刊登了上述发现。
研究人员对它们研究的鲸鱼中有多少头发声、为什么发声都一无所知。不过，以往的研究表明只有雄性蓝鲸才会发出这样的声音。因此，研究人员猜想雄鲸们可能协同一致，发出同种音高的声音作为求偶信号。
由于多普勒效应，雌鲸们要是向某雄鲸投怀送抱，它们就会听到较高昂的呼唤；不过，雌鲸们要是对某雄鲸置之不理，那听到的就是低沉的呼唤了。小夜曲唱走调，那雄鲸老兄你今夜就得独自徘徊了╮(╯▽╰)╭