Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whale species and predator in the ocean, averaging in lengths at 16 metres. Yet, given their size, they remain one of the most mysterious and least studied cetacean.
Whale researcher Shane Gero and his team, spent thousands of hours with sperm whales, to find out that sperm whales might not be that different to Homosapiens after all. Specifically, the whale’s “click” is the largest sound produced by any animal and has an identifying dialect. According to the paper published by Gero and his team, the whales are not born with different vocal chords, they simply pick up the dialect from one and other and copy what they hear.
Sperm whales are not the only species who learn dialect in this manner. Dolphins and chimpanzees are also examples of such behaviour. These species tend to portray the same behaviours such as hunting and playing, but if compared between different social groups, the way they carry out these behaviours can be drastically different.
Gero states, “It’s like how my Canadian passport tells you a little bit about who I am. I like hockey and I put maple syrup on everything”. “The main way we identify these different cultures is their dialects,” he says.
Whale scientists working throughout the world have identified 80 unique “codas”, the sperm whale equivalent of words, which is produced when a click is emitted. Each sperm whale clan has its own dialect, a unique combination of clicks shared between the other members who make up their clan.
Scientists are already aware of the vocal clans in the Pacific Ocean, but Gero’s work was predominantly on individuals in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the study, published recently in the Royal Society Open Science.
Sperm whale societies can get very complicated, and every whale belongs to multiple social groups. Individuals tend to spend their time in fairly small family pods, and these small families can converge to form larger pods with those that share the same dialect to form clans, and members of a clan may be so greatly dispersed that they never meet one another.
Gero says that Atlantic Ocean sperm whales spend most of their lives in pods of 5-7 made up of family members rather than multi-family groups. Within these families, individuals form friendship bonds and spend more time with their selected friends than other members of the family pod. In the Caribbean, whales also form friendships whereby two families will swim alongside each other. In the Pacific, scientists have never observed this friendship bond between individuals. No two whales have ever been spotted together more than once. Pacific sperm whales that speak the same dialect, form pods without any preferences for the families or individuals.
These differences between the sperm whale clans were in response to environmental challenges. In the Pacific, sperm whales travel over great distances, swimming up to 50km a day. By comparison, whales in the Caribbean are rarely 400 kilometers apart. As a result of this, the Pacific species may not be as picky about which clan members they befriend and are less vulnerable to predators like orcas, so it would be more beneficial for the whales to assist all members of the clan equally, as a defence against predation. Gero describes the Caribbean sperm whales as more “individualistic”, while their Pacific cousins have “an-us-versus-them attitude” about their clans.
The ongoing research into sperm whale behaviour and culture suggests there’s more at stake for these great giants, which still faces uncertain threats induced from climate change and a build-up of toxic materials.
If one sperm whale clan goes extinct, that’s it: The tradition and wisdom specific to their niche is lost.
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