Today@Dal

HALIFAX—New research reveals there’s more to being a sperm whale than deep diving, eating giant squid and being as big as a city bus.

These lumbering behemoths may have their own distinct dialects and cultures — and prefer other whales that are most like themselves, according to a marine researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

After analyzing 30 years of underwater recordings, PhD candidate Mauricio Cantor has found sperm whales learn to communicate from their peers and relatives in much the same way that humans do.

“They prefer to interact with those that communicate using the same sounds that they do ... and we call these vocal clans,” he says.

“Even though they are very different from us, they have key similarities with our society, in terms of having families, having social preferences and also communicating using similar sounds.”

When near the surface of the ocean, typical sperm whales emit clicking noises that sound like a stick being raked across a series of metal bars — a kind of staccato Morse code.
Researchers have long known that these sounds have patterns associated with separate populations of sperm whales.

Cantor’s research, however, goes much deeper than that.

Using recordings that date back to the 1980s, Cantor created computer simulations of whale populations spread over many centuries. The technique generated evidence suggesting communication within these large groups is the product of social learning.

“The most likely scenario is that they are learning from their peers. They are conforming to the most common sounds they hear, just like us. They tend to copy what is in fashion.”

The fascinating result, he says, is segregated whale cultures that are not unlike the various human cultures around the globe.

“We usually interact more with those who are similar to us. I hope that finding the similarities with other animal societies can improve our relationship with the natural world — with the whales and other animals.”

In the tropical Galapagos Islands off Ecuador, Cantor studied two clans that shared the same area but were segregated because they didn’t share the same dialect — a phenomenon that is rare in the animal kingdom but easy to recognize among people.

“One (clan) has very regular clicks, very evenly spaced, and the other has clicks that include long pauses ... with one click at the end,” says Cantor, a 32-year-old biology student who is originally from Brazil.

Read more (http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/04/14/sperm-whales-form-communities-based-on-different-dialects.html)