The Loneliest Whale in the World

My interview with an expert is scheduled for later this week, so I am going to post a teaser for today's blog. I have been thinking a lot about Oral Knowledge, trying to grasp my mind around this concept, and something caught my attention, which helped me to understand this unit better--without considering ancient civilizations or even humans at all (gasp!).

Today's post has to do with a whale. A whale unlike any other whale; a whale who swims alone, never knowing a family, a friend, or a lover. She does not belong to a tribe, and never has. She was discovered in 1989, due to curiosity of this strange behavior. In 1992, NOAA started to track her using a "classified array of hydrophones employed by the Navy to monitor enemy submarines." (Source).

Her songs came in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. For a while, the researchers could not understand what it was that was isolating her. But after analyzing her song frequency, they found that she has a voice unlike any other--she sings at a frequency of 52 Hz, whereas most Baleen whales sing at a frequency of 15 to 25 Hz! She desperately calls out and pleas for a response, but no one can hear her! She is all alone.

•  To listen to her frequency in comparison to a normal whale's frequency, click here.

Because she is unable to communicate, she is unable to recognize any known migration routes of the other Baleen whales, so her encounters with them are seldom, if she has any at all.

Scientists are trying to figure out why she is the way she is. "The best guess of researchers is that this lonely whale is either a "hybrid between two species of whale, or the last surviving member of an unknown species" (Source).

This really stood out to me that this mammal is could be the only one left on this earth, its language never to be heard again; never to be preserved or passed down. Once her life is over, her songs will be gone with her. This preservation is important. Like I mentioned in one of my comments about how important it is to preserve a language, and not just translate it into the most "useful" language of the day and age.

To quote, I said, "It is like an art that is dead, to never come alive again. It is not always the best thing to move forward without looking back, because we need our history for our survival. We need to learn from our past. You say, 'What is the loss? Because it is preserved in translation," but think of your scripture study. Your comprehension is limited to your language. But then, in our religion classes, our professors who are also experts in Hebrew (for example), teach us the direct translation of a word, and suddenly the verse takes on a whole new meaning and testimony. Just having this one translation of the Bible, does not completely preserve its original completeness. This is why there will never be a true, complete unification process that encompasses all languages. Additionally, there are words in some languages that just do not exist in the same way in other languages. If you have ever tried listening to a song in one language and then a translation of it in another language, it is just not the same, and much beauty is lost"

Again, this is just a teaser, until I am able to interview and post later again this week. Adios!