The Times reports on the work of David Rothenberg, “a musician and environmental philosopher,” who has extensively studied the songs of humpback whales.

Rothenberg blogs for the Times about an enduring dilemma of humpback songs: They change constantly, but we have no idea why.

All we know is that only the male whales are singing, and that all the males in a given group tend to sing the identical tune. They change their song as a group, each ocean’s population sings a consistent song, and in neighboring oceans, you’ll hear a different song. These songs go on for about 20 minutes before repeating, and one song cycle can last up to 24 hours.

First of all…how cool is that? (I know—not the most sophisticated blogger analysis, but sometimes, when you really try to absorb the beauty of nature, wonder is the only appropriate emotion.)

For many years, Rothenberg explains, scientists assume that the songs were some kind of mating call—after all, only the males were singing, right? But in four decades of study, no scientist has ever seen a female humpback actually respond to a song, which would make these whale songs the world’s least effective mating call.

Here’s the current theory:

The mainstream scientific view about humpback whale song is that it’s all a kind of pop music evolutionary strategy; that the whales all like the same hit song, but it has to be a continually changing new “hit.” Just like humans listening to Top 40 radio, quickly getting bored with the latest chart topper and always craving the next variant.

Which still wouldn’t explain why only males sing…but read the full post for more nuance.

The point, as far as I’m concerned, is that the more we learn about whale intelligence, the more we are forced to be humble about our own—which undercuts much of the justification for killing whales and other intelligent animals, that we are vastly superior to them. What if, compared to whales, we’re just brutes who happen to channel our brutish aggression into very effective weapons that we then use for no apparent reason?