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Humpback whales sing most frequently where and when they breed. But researchers have discovered that whales can sing complex songs even when diving and foraging, when it's neither the time nor the place for mating behavior. The study is published in the journal PLoS ONE.
在繁殖的時間和地點，座頭鯨唱歌最為頻繁。然而研究人員發現鯨在潛水和覓食（既不在交配的場所，也不是交配的時辰）時的叫聲更加復雜。《公共科學圖書館》刊發了這項研究。
Researchers tagged ten humpback whales with suction-cup sensors and tracked each mammal for a full day in Antarctic waters during the fall—the time and place when whales feed rather than breed. While the sensors picked up background song near all of the whales, two individuals performed long, complex songs more suited to mating behavior. They even sang while on feeding lunges more than 100 meters below the surface.
研究人員給十頭座頭鯨貼上吸盤式傳感器，花一整天時間來跟蹤每頭鯨。實驗地點選在南極水域，時間選在秋季，因為這時是捕食而不是繁殖的季節。傳感器收集到附近所有鯨的背景音樂，但只有兩頭鯨“演唱”了長而復雜、更適用于交配行為的歌曲。這些座頭鯨甚至能在低于水平面100米的地方用肺部唱歌。
The fact that these whales can vocalize even under widely different water pressures may help us figure out how they produce their songs. And more important, the overlap in breeding and feeding activities proves humpback and other baleen whales are way more behaviorally flexible than we thought. Unlike some human singers, they are definitely not one-hit wonders.
實際上，這些鯨能在多種不同的水壓條件下發聲，這也許能幫助我們弄明白它們是如何唱歌的。而且最重要的是，繁殖和覓食活動可以同時發生，這證明座頭鯨和其他須鯨類一樣比之前想象的要靈活。與人類的歌唱家不同的是，它們絕不會是曇花一現。
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