The journey around Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America, is one of the most treacherous in the world. The cape has claimed hundreds of ships and thousands of sailors. Not many commercial vessels make the journey today. But for sail-powered yachts, rounding the cape is a big attraction—like climbing Mount Everest.
Cape Horn is named for the home town of the Dutch navigator who described it, in 1616. It’s a small island that features a cliff a quarter of a mile high.
Have you ever heard of “mosquito ringtones”? They’re phone ringtones that teens can easily hear but the frequency is too high for adults to hear, since humans naturally start losing the ability to hear higher frequencies in their 20s. New research suggests that some whale species use a similar trick—for very different reasons. Instead of trying to hide the sound of a ringing phone from adults, some whales call at frequencies too low for predators to hear.
