Blue whales are hidden giants. They’re the largest animals on the planet. But they’re shy, and they inhabit some of the most remote locations on the planet, so they’re hard to spot. Yet researchers recently found a new group of them. They didn’t actually see any of the whales. Instead, they heard their “songs” in recordings made over the last couple of decades. They sped up the recordings to make the calls easier to hear.
Each population of blue whales produces its own unique songs. The songs can travel hundreds of miles.
In storybook tales of old, sailors feared the Sargasso Sea as a mythically cursed region where the mightiest ships mysteriously vanished. Those stories, of course, are pure fantasy. This legendary sea doesn’t actually harbor a graveyard of doomed ships. But scientists have recently learned of an even greater treasure hidden below its famously calm blue waters—one that provides clues to an entirely different mystery.
