For many species, scientists are only beginning to recognize the role of sound in their survival, including leopard seals. A study recently published in Scientific Reports found that leopard seals arrange their songs with a surprising sense of order. Each breeding season, male leopard seals dive beneath the ice and repeat long, solitary sequences of five distinct call types for hours on end. “But we can assume that a particular combination of sounds is very meaningful.”These sound combos placed leopard seals curiously alongside us. Leopard seals are intensely solitary mammals, scattered across vast stretches of pack ice, which makes it unclear how young seals ever learn the breeding songs in the first place.