Quotes from Hal Whitehead

In the extreme, fads can arise, spread through, and then disappear from a community in a fraction of a human generation.

Cultures evolve. The culture associated with a community changes over time, moving this way and that, pushed by several forces.

genetic drift, and

Similarly, modern religions that legitimize material wealth seem to be attractive, spreading fast at the expense of more austere variants, while religions that demand human sacrifice have not really stood the test of time.

There are currently four species of sirenian: three manatee species in the Atlantic and Caribbean and one species of dugong in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Conformity in general is thought to stabilize cultural evolution, although it can also promote rapid change should a new variant cross some threshold of popularity for other reasons.

The renowned biologist and thinker E. O. Wilson calls the study of gene-culture coevolution "one of the great unexplored domains of science.

Humpback song has clearly had its effects on human culture—influencing both our music and whaling practices—but what of our interest in whale culture? These discoveries are particularly important for us because there is only one way large numbers of animals can sing the same song that evolves over periods of time that are much less than an individual's lifetime: culture. Genes

The sea cows lived in the northern North Pacific and ate kelp. Humans exterminated sea cows in 1768.

The echolocation clicks of sperm whales are very powerful, allowing detection of prey and other things at longer ranges than vision or other senses can manage underwater.9 Sonar can also be very precise. Dolphins and porpoises with their higher frequency echolocation can build detailed pictures of their surroundings. Sonar

Sonar users can sense the bottom and sides of the ocean—islands, seamounts, and coasts—as well as each other, getting detailed pictures of the shapes and inner structures (as in ultrasound scans of human pregnancies—ultrasound is sonar) of potential prey, social partners, and competitors. Sonar can also alert them to the presence of predators, but primarily the sonar of the toothed whales is about finding food.

Terrestrial mammals may be ecosystem-controlling "keystone species," like elephants, or ecosystem engineers, like beavers. Well before humans, mammals dominated much of the land. They

This degree of specialization is not expected unless it takes some practice to drive fish well. It is not clear why certain dolphins become specialized like this—they don't obviously seem to get more fish and surely use more energy herding than do their comrades, waiting for their food to arrive.

The ocean covers the majority of planet Earth, contains most of the living world, and is a primary driver of Earth's biosphere. Life evolved in the ocean and continues to evolve there. The

Removing the ink, containing the pigment melanin that inhibits secretions in the digestive system, as well as other chemicals that apparently impair taste and smell, would, the scientists state, "improve palatability and internal digestive processes.

Water is dense, about 840 times as dense as air—roughly as dense as most life forms, as they are primarily made of water. This means that marine organisms fight no battle with gravity and possess none of the structures that we need on land to combat it. In the ocean, there are no tree trunks. The

Seawater is about 0.5–0.9 percent oxygen at the surface. Most marine animals use gills to get this oxygen into their bodies. A

One can sense and communicate through a variety of channels, primarily what we call the five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. Moving from the air to water changes the relative benefit of each of the senses. Chemical

In this scenario, complexity and change may be driven by female choice.83

is a specialized behavior and, as a consequence, only occurs in areas where the ecology is right—where prey and sponges are available.34

The characteristics of the dynamics of humpback whale song, evolution at a rather steady rate, with occasional revolutions, match those of human art, music, and literature. In his 1990 book, The Clockwork Muse, Colin Martindale shows that trends over time in human art and music fit with laws derived from what we know of human psychology and the principles of cultural evolution.

One sense that does do better underwater is sound. It travels about four times faster than in air. More

The cooperatives seem to have ended with the advent of Europeans along the coast, Europeans who on occasion killed the cooperative dolphins. There

We can get caught in what have been called "information cascades," where incorrect information propagates through a community because individuals, for whatever reason, prefer to copy others rather that trust their own judgment.