Of all the baleen whales, the humpback is unique. These whales are sociable and are rarely seen alone. They may sometimes travel in small family groups of two or three; a mother and a calf, accompanied by a bull. They can also be seen traveling together in larger groups called pods. It is in these groups that many "whales watches" can observe and hear the whales while at play.

Spectacular activities such as breaching, spy hopping, lob tailing, and flipper slapping are part of their entertainment repertoire. Breaching is a breathtaking event. The whale throws its entire body out of the water, landing with a tremendous smack. It is not yet known exactly why whales do this. It may be a form of long distance communication or it may be just a playful activity, or a means of ridding unwanted parasites from their skin.

Spy hopping goes to show how curious the humpback is. The whale will vertically raise its head out of the water until its eyes can scan the surface. It is not uncommon for a whale to watch a whale watch.

Lob tailing and flipper slapping are similar. Lob tailing is when the whale lifts its tail, or fluke, out of the water as vertically as possible and then forcibly slaps it down on the water. Again, observers theorize that this is another form of long distance communication but they can't be certain. Flipper slapping is done in the same manner with the whale's pectoral fins.

Natural activities, such as feeding, migration, mating, and birth are also under observation by scientists. One type of feeding that is unique to the humpback is bubble netting. The purpose of this activity is to take as large a mouthful of krill (a small shrimp-like crustacean) as possible. When a concentrated amount of krill is found, the whale swims down below it and starts blowing bubbles from its blow hole while swimming upward toward the surface in a slow spiral. The bubbles and the spiraling current trap the krill. With such easy accessibility, the whale can then take enormous mouthfuls of it. Both individual whales and groups of them utilize this feeding technique.

Another fascinating aspect of their behavior is the whale song. Their song is the same all year, but the next year they will sing a new song. Each song is composed of six themes, in which the passages are identical or with slowly changing phrases. Each phrase can contain from two or five different sounds. The phrases are always in the same order, though when singing, one or more phrases may be omitted at various times. The duration of any of these beautiful songs can be between six to thirty minutes. If the songs are recorded and sped up fourteen times the normal playing speed, they sound amazingly like that of birds.

The composition of the whale's song is different around the world. The songs do, however, follow the same laws of evolution and maintain the same basic structure in pods worldwide. This suggest that the whales inherit a set of laws and behaviors and then improvise on them. It still remains to be seen if this is done genetically or by learning. The whales don't sing at their summer feeding grounds. Since their songs are so complex, it has been theorized that they forget between seasons and then later, improvise with the few fragments they can remember.

If one were to compare whale songs from the same area for two consecutive years, one would be able to pick up some familiar phrases. If you were to compare two songs from a wider time span, they would not be recognizable.

The whale is one of the world's most intelligent and highly diversified mammals due to a brain that is capable of higher intelligence.

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