Scientific American
The Whale Song Project (Whale FM)
Citizen scientists can help study whale communications and pass along their observations through the Whale Song Project (aka Whale FM), a whale-song identification project that Scientific American launched in partnership with the Citizen Science Alliance (CSA). The Whale Song Project, available as part of the CSA’s suite of Zooniverse citizen-science projects, is designed specifically to assist in killer (Orca) and pilot whale research being conducted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Through the Whale Song Project, citizen scientists are presented with a whale call and shown where it was recorded on a map of the world’s oceans and seas. After listening to the whale call—represented on screen as a spectrogram showing how the pitch of the sound changes with time—citizen scientists are asked to listen to a number of potential matching calls from the project’s database. If a match is found, the citizen scientist clicks on that sound’s spectrogram and the results are stored.
The dataset generated by this project should help scientists to answer a number of questions regarding whale communication. For example, researchers want to know the size of the pilot whales’ call repertoire and whether repertoire size is a sign of intelligence. In addition, researchers seek to understand whether the two different types of pilot whales—long fin and short fin—have different call repertoires, and, if so, whether this signifies a distinct dialect.
Project Details
- PRINCIPAL SCIENTIST: Peter Tyack, Scientist Emeritus
- SCIENTIST AFFILIATION: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- DATES: Ongoing
- PROJECT TYPE: Data Processing
- COST: Free
- GRADE LEVEL: All Ages
- TIME COMMITMENT: Variable
- HOW TO JOIN:
Citizen scientists can sign up to participate in the Whale Song Project using their existing Scientific American or Zooniverse logins and passwords, or they can create new Scientific American or Zooniverse accounts.
See more projects in Free, Data Processing, All Ages.
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2 Comments
Add CommentI have told a number of people, particularly those with a high self estimate, that people usually overestimate their intelligence and underestimate the intelligence of other animals. Now we have learned that octopi have intelligence, enough to possibly communicate with each other, and some creative ability. Now we are attempting to determine whether whales intelligently communicate with each other. There is much more work to be done, with many other species.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis seems laudable and interesting, but I have one nagging doubt. It also seems very subjective. As the whale songs have already been reduced to digital signals, wouldn't some off-the-shelf statistical software provide a better classification tool than the well-meaning but very subjective efforts of volunteers?
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