{"id":4320,"date":"2015-09-08T11:53:24","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T15:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=4320"},"modified":"2015-09-14T10:57:20","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T14:57:20","slug":"how-sperm-whales-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/how-sperm-whales-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"How Sperm whales speak<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4321\" style=\"width: 506px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/NCOMMS-14-18961B_FeaturedImage-1024x723.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4321\" class=\"wp-image-4321\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/NCOMMS-14-18961B_FeaturedImage-1024x723.jpg\" alt=\"A group of female Sperm whales diving for food off the Galapagos Islands. (Image Credit: Mauricio Cantor, Whitehead Lab, Dalhousie University)\" width=\"496\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/NCOMMS-14-18961B_FeaturedImage-1024x723.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/NCOMMS-14-18961B_FeaturedImage-1024x723-300x211.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 496px) 100vw, 496px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4321\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A group of female Sperm whales diving for food off the Galapagos Islands. (Image Credit: Mauricio Cantor, Whitehead Lab, Dalhousie University)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sperm whales learn different \u2018dialects\u2019 of their \u2018click\u2019 sounds through cultural learning, a method of learning found in both Orcas and humans, say researchers. This reinforces the idea that the same processes responsible for the formation of human cultures can operate in animal societies. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sperm whales live in clans &#8211; groups of families that can be distinguished by the pattern of their vocal \u201cclick\u201d repertoires. Researchers looked at data of sperm whale social interactions and vocalisations collected over 18 years near the Galapagos Islands, to understand how these vocal clans most likely emerged. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The researchers\u00a0concluded that the dialects likely emerged through the whales preferentially learning, and emulating the vocalisations of whales that behaved in a similar fashion. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/ncomms\/2015\/150908\/ncomms9091\/full\/ncomms9091.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in<em> Nature Communications\u00a0<\/em>on <strong>September 8<\/strong><span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_453723367\"><span class=\"aQJ\"><strong>, 2015<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0author<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mauricio Cantor, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sperm whales learn different \u2018dialects\u2019 of their \u2018click\u2019 sounds through cultural learning, a method of learning found in both Orcas and humans, say researchers. This reinforces the idea that the same processes responsible for the formation of human cultures can operate in animal societies. Sperm whales live in clans &#8211; groups of families that can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[39,1531,917,2454],"class_list":["post-4320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-animal-behaviour","tag-communication","tag-evolution","tag-whales"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/NCOMMS-14-18961B_FeaturedImage-1024x723.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-17G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4322,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320\/revisions\/4322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}