By Some time ago, a lecturer of mine was extolling humanity's achievements in science. He concluded that there was no greater example of mankind's genius than the Internet. A global communications network, allowing one human to communicate with almost any other, virtually anywhere on the planet. Personally, I have a very different idea of what constitutes genius, such as the sublime tones of Dustin O'Halloran, but his point got me thinking. I asked myself the question - Is mankind the most intelligent creature on the planet, and if so, by what standard?
It's quite easy to find evidence supporting man's exclusive dominion over the Earth. Our achievements in art and science alone would seem to ensure our position as undisputed rulers of this planet. I didn't think much more about it until a friend of mine lent me a copy of Cosmos, a television program from 1980, hosted by the late Professor Carl Sagan. In one particular episode Professor Sagan examines the communication abilities of the whale. They too have art, the songs they sing and they also have a world-wide communication network.
Like humans, whales are mammals, and they're the largest creatures ever to evolve on the planet. However, these majestic beings have much more in common with humans than mere biology. Whales mate for life. They nurse their young and educate them through a long childhood. They play, and fight, and hunt, but perhaps their most distinctive trait is their singing. As Professor Sagan pointed out, we don't know what the whale songs are, or indeed what they mean, but we do know that they contain massive amounts of information - Professor Sagan compared the information content of one song to that contained in the Iliad, or the Odyssey.
In 2006 scientists confirmed that whale song has a syntax and whales utilise a hierarchical structure to build phrases. They stopped short of describing whale song as a language, but the research confirmed that whales weren't merely making pleasant noises, but were actually communicating intelligently. The biologist Roger Payne was the first human to discover whale song among humpback whales. He was also the first to discover a deep sound channel in the ocean, through which whales can communicate with each other virtually anywhere on the planet. This channel arguably formed the first global telecommunications network and has existed for tens of millions of years.
Mankind, depending on who you ask, has existed for less than a million years. Only in the last few hundred years have we become surefooted on the ocean, but even in this short time we've enacted untold damage on the whale, hunting some to near extinction. And although the International Whaling Commission declared a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 we continue to hunt them. Perhaps nearly as tragic is the fact that the noise pollution from shipping interferes with whale song. Those ephemeral tones that once echoed through the deepest oceans have been replaced with the mechanical sound of what some call progress.
Our treatment of these beautiful, intelligent beings demonstrates that while we might speak of our achievements in large rooms and praise our ingenuity amongst ourselves, at heart we are still barbarians. So, should the day come when mankind performs the ultimate act of barbarism and destroys not only himself, but the whale as well, what will the last whale song mean?
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