The Loneliest Whale in the World
If you're looking forward to a busy, social weekend (or, for that matter, dreading one), here's a story for you: right now, in the North Pacific, the world's loneliest whale is roaming the ocean all alone, because his high-pitched voice drives all other whales away.
He's nicknamed "the 52 hertz whale" because that's the frequency at which he sings his whale songs (most whales sing at between 15 and 25 hertz). His weird voices seems to have alienated all the other whales; the only people who listen to him are Navy sonar engineers, who have tracked his movements since 1992 using a classified system of submarine-detecting hydrophones. No one has ever seen the 52 hertz whale, and so no one knows why his voice is so high. Scientists speculate that he could be malformed, a "hybrid" between two species of whale, or simply deaf.
In an ironic twist, the story of the lonely whale has resurfaced in the most social of human contexts. The novelist Karen Russell, who must have read this article in the New York Times several years ago, shared it on a podcast called "The Dinner Party Download" ("the show that helps you win the dinner party"). Since then, it's been 'reblogged' around the internet (I found it via Nicola Twilley at Good). If only the lonely whale could know that he's being talked about everywhere!
