Audio quiz: recognise the cetacean by its song

Can you tell the song of a humpback whale from that of a sperm whale? Can you recognise the ultra-fast clicks of a harbour porpoise or the complex whistles of a common bottlenose dolphin? This audio quiz offers 10 rounds in which you will hear a real recording of a cetacean and have to guess the species from 4 options. Your final score will tell you how good your bioacoustic ear is.

All the sounds come from the site’s reference sound library, built from the public NOAA, Discovery of Sound in the Sea, MBARI and Project CETI databases. Every recording is genuine and has been identified by scientific teams. At the end of the quiz you will find the full answers, with a link to each species page and the main acoustic features worth remembering.

How does it work? Click “Start the quiz” below. For each round, press the play button, listen carefully, then select the species you recognise from the 4 choices. You can replay the recording as many times as you need before confirming your answer. Good luck!