Jorro#baleenwhale #larynx #NoisePollution #humans #communication #navigation
“We found that this U-shaped structure pushes against a big fatty cushion on the inside of the larynx," Professor Coen Elemans, one of the study's lead authors and a biologist at University of Southern Denmark, said in a statement. "When the whales push air from their lungs past this cushion, it starts to vibrate and this generates very low frequency underwater sounds."
“On the one hand, the baleen whales' unusual larynx endows them with a remarkable ability. They can vocalize at extremely low frequencies and in so doing communicate with other whales as far down into the ocean as 100 meters deep. At the same time, this low frequency makes the whales' vocalizations extremely vulnerable to human noise pollution like shipping traffic.”
