Human beings have unique voices — from the deep, resonating bass of James Earl Jones to the raspy melodies sung by Broadway star Carol Channing — and we routinely recognize individuals based solely on the way they sound, for example over the telephone, on a music CD or in an animated film. The same theory that explains individual differences in human speech has recently been applied to other members of the animal kingdom, including dogs and deer. Now researchers from Syracuse University in New York are working to understand whether individually distinctive vocal characteristics of North Atlantic right whales could be used to identify and track individuals — a potentially useful tool for studying an endangered species that spends much of its life hidden under the water.
