In a 1971 paper published in Science, biologist Roger Payne, then at Rockefeller University, and Scott McVay, then an administrator at Princeton University, described the "surprisingly beautiful sounds" made by humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae; Science, 173:585-97). Analyzing underwater recordings made by a Navy engineer, the duo found that these whale sounds were intricately repetitive. "Because one of the characteristics of bird songs is that they are fixed patterns of sounds that are repeated, we call the fixed patterns of humpback sounds 'songs,'" they wrote.
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