Little West

The phenomenon of strange sounds mentioned in the videos that their owners say they captured near the coasts of Alexandria, Marsa Matruh and Libyan coastal areas has aroused great interest among the general public because of its ambiguity. Most of these sounds are attributed to the giant whales, especially the blue whale. What is the truth of these sounds, and why are the whales making them? Can the human ear hear it?

Do whales make noises?

Whales not only arouse interest in being the largest mammals on Earth, but also for their sounds. Scientists found that, in addition to simple sounds, many types of whales - including the blue whale (the largest mammal with a length of 27 meters and weighs 130 tons) and a humpback whale (12 meters long and weighing thirty tons) - emit a series of sounds in the form of "Song".

Whales' song units are expressions, a series of similar phrases, and polymorphic songs. All males in each group sing the same song, which develops over time. And when the whale groups get mixed, songs can spread.

What do the sounds of whales look like?

Several scientific studies concerned with the sounds of whales and how to produce them, among them a scientific study by researchers from the French University of Brice, which analyzed more than a million songs of different types of large whales including the blue whale and the humpback whale. Six stationary underwater speakers recorded the sounds of the blue whale over a six-year period - from 2010 to 2015 - in the southern Indian Ocean.

The study also recorded the same sounds of humpback whale.

Scientists have noted during the study that the frequency of these sounds decreased over time for reasons that may be due to sound or environmental pollution, or because of the impact of climate changes in the seas and oceans.

Why do whales sing?

Scientists do not know exactly why the whales sing, although the most prevalent hypothesis is that they do this for the purpose of mating, especially since singing in some species such as the humpback is restricted to males only, but other scientists suggest various reasons such as controlling areas of influence or forming alliances with males Others during mating season or to be a form of echo location, where whales listen to echoes of their voices and other whale songs, as it may be to discover the locations of prey that they hunt.

Can we hear the sounds of whales?

The typical frequency range for most whales, including the blue whale and the humpback whale, ranges between ten and thirty hertz, meaning that it is at the minimum human hearing, which ranges from twenty hertz to twenty kilohertz, which means in theory that one can hear sections of the sounds of whales.

But the difficulty of transmitting sounds in the depths of the ocean to the air makes it impossible for the human ear to capture these sounds as clearly as they appear in the published videos.

Are the videos real?

It should be noted that many of these passages are old, many years old, and are reported from unreliable foreign websites.

By comparing the sounds contained in some of the videos, it turns out that they are actually identical to the sounds of the humpback whale that scientists recorded by hydrophones, but they are based on videos of large whales and suggest that they can be heard directly without devices, which is the secret of the excitement in these videos.

But other passages present different sounds from the sounds of whales whose validity cannot be confirmed, and they are attributed to another phenomenon called "Trumpets of Heaven" especially that some of the publishers of these videos have not hidden their composition. Activists on the media also shared the same clips with different voices, which leads to the belief that the matter is like a "whirlwind on Facebook".