I bet whale-oil evolved to act as an acoustic medium.

From friend Chris P:

Check out the article below... believe it or not, it's not a joke - it's literally true: NASA lost a lot of satellite data due to a whale oil shortage.

Space data lost to whale-oil shortage

 Thinking about it, that oil evolved to act as an acoustic lens medium. I bet that they can focus for different distances, maybe it refractive index varies oddly over audio frequencies. They can appreciate each other physically as partly transparent beings, and selecting on how ones skin reflected. 

It probably has all sorts of really interesting properties that we know little about.Like frequency dependency. Maybe even a complex molecule unlike ordinary hydrocarbons. .