Whales Have Regional Dialects
June 11, 2011 at 11:00 am Chad Upton 4 comments
By Chad Upton | Editor
It’s pretty common knowledge that whales, dolphins and various porpoises “speak” to each other in a language we don’t completely understand. Sperm whales in particular, speak in a series of clicks called “codas.”
Much like we recognize the voices of our friends, whales can tell which member of their group is clicking. Also like people, researchers have discovered that whales from different regions have distinct accents.
Sperm whales have a call known as the “Five Regular” which is used by sperm whales worldwide. It’s a series of five evenly spaced clicks believed to be used for individual identity.
This communication is very useful for navigating in dark waters — whales can dive as deep as 1000 meters (3280 ft)!
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Image: Tim Bayman (cc)
Sources: Science Daily, Wikipedia (Whales)
Entry filed under: Animals. Tags: animals, codas, communication, sperm, whales.
Broken Secrets 
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Monday Snax | Little Stories | June 13, 2011 at 4:12 pm
[…] Whales Have Regional Dialects. Yet another reason to be totally in love with whales, especially the idea of whales. (Broken Secrets) […]
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kit | June 22, 2011 at 10:18 am
di A lects
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belugabeliefs | July 22, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Dialects doesn’t quite do justice to the the variants in whale communication. Nonetheless, its good to see the first steps towards understanding that this whatles communicate. The next step is understanding the inherent poetry in that communication!
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whaledreamer | September 17, 2011 at 10:43 am
The sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, is a marine mammal species, order Cetacea, a toothed whale (odontocete) having the largest brain of any animal.
A bull can grow to 20.5 metres (67 ft) long. It is the largest living toothed animal. The head can represent up to one-third of the animal’s length. It has a cosmopolitan distribution across the oceans. The species feeds on squid and fish, diving as deep as 3 kilometres (9,800 ft), which makes it the deepest diving mammal.
i knew you were wrong when you said 1000m. this is taken from wikipedia, not to be trusted, but national geographic confirms this information to be true.
sweet blog.