Signature information in the song of the humpback whale

This report tests the hypothesis that individual humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) can be recognized and discriminated from other individuals on the basis of the ’’cry’’ vocalization. Multivariate discriminant analyses, based on six measurable variables, were used to examine intra- and interindividual differences in the ’’cries’’ from several individuals. Cries between themes of one song are very different, whereas those between songs of one individual are similar. Results show a high degree of discriminating power between individual animals. Thus, signature information is potentially available from ’’cries’’ within songs, despite common song formats for all calling animals on a given bank. The statistical techniques used will be of great value in animal vocalization studies.