Male leopard seals are very enthusiastic singers when it comes time to woo a mate, and a new study found that their songs are similar to those of human nursery rhymes.
Spring is a busy time for male leopard seals. It's mating season, and they have a lot of singing to do. They will sing for two minutes, then go up for air for two minutes, and repeat the cycle for up to thirteen hours a day. It's still unknown whether they sing to attract female seals, warn off other males, or both.
Researchers from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, studied the recorded songs of twenty-six male leopard seals. They compared the "information entropy" or randomness in the songs to that of other animals and music composed by humans, including Mozart and the Beatles.
Leopard seals can only produce five notes, so they can only make their songs distinctive by the arrangement of those notes. Accordingly, the songs they produce have lower entropy than contemporary, classical, and baroque music, but higher than those of humpback whales or dolphins. The closest match in the study was nursery rhymes.
"Nursery rhymes are simple, repetitive and easy to remember — that's what we see in the leopard seal songs …" lead author Lucinda Chambers said. Next, researchers plan to develop mathematical models for leopard seal songs to determine if individuals have their own unique songs, similar to those of bottlenose dolphins.
Previously:
• US governmental conservationists really hope that young endangered seals will stop getting eels stuck in their nostrils
• Seal slaps kayaker in his face with an octopus
• A seal moves on land by 'galumphing'
