MALE PROFESSOR: While scientists have attempted to explain the 52-hertz whale’s unusual song, each of their theories is flawed, and the whale’s uniqueness remains a mystery.
First, it’s unlikely that the 52-hertz whale is a hybrid. Its migration pattern is too unusual. All hybrid whales that we know follow the migration patterns of nonhybrid whales, and so all hybrids typically travel together with normal whales. If the 52-hertz whale were a hybrid, it would likely do the same. By listening to the locations of the 52-hertz whale’s song, however, scientists have been able to determine that it does not migrate alongside other whales. Unlike all other known hybrids, it has its own unusual migration pattern and migrates alone.
Second, deafness or poor hearing cannot really explain one important feature of the 52-hertz whale’s song: its extremely high pitch. The pitch actually depends upon the physical structure of the whale’s throat.
You see, just like in humans, the vocal sounds that a whale makes originate in its throat, in its vocal apparatus. To produce a song of such an extremely high pitch, the throat structure of this particular whale must be very unusual. And this unusual throat structure cannot be caused by a damaged sense of hearing, because there’s typically no connection between hearing and throat structure.
Third, it’s also unlikely that the 52-hertz whale is the only known member of a rare species. Even if the species was rare, the whale had to have parents. Those parents would have also sung at the
52-hertz frequency. But the technology that detects whale sounds underwater has been in use for many decades. So if other 52-hertz whales—such as the parents of today’s whale—had been around at a relatively recent time, scientists would have heard them. But no such whale songs have ever been heard before this one.
