Word: philippi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...developed sense of hearing that evolved--as did echolocution--to compensate for an inability to see underwater. The noises they make sound like clicks and whistles and meaningless barks to the human ear. However, some observers have noticed that whales put these sounds together in startling ways. Cummings and Philippi, who worked on the Navy's marine mammal research program, found that in the right whale, "Low frequency sounds occurred in similar stanzas lasting 11 to 14 minutes...These phonetic components...were so orderly that listeners could predict the appearance of the next type of signal." Carl Sagan noticed that...