The whales appear to prefer the company of "like-minded" individuals,
based on common vocal clicking behavior-an example of culture, researchers
say. Christopher Intagliata reports.
We humans are social creatures-we stick together. Family traditionally
came first. Then more distant relatives. Then larger groups of unrelated
individuals, connected by culture. But it turns out the same could be said
for sperm whales. "So usually you find the female, and their mom and the
grandmas and their aunts, and they all stay together for many years."
Mauricio Cantor, a biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova
Scotia. He says those closely related family groups then seek out other
families with similar behavior: "They tend to hang out or stay together
with those who produce the same kinds of sounds." <whale clicking sound>
Meaning whale cliques are based on producing similar clicks.
And similarly clicking whales don't just hang out together, he says. They
also emulate each other's songs, or codas. Meaning clans of whales evolve
their own dialects-their own form of culture. And these dialects are key.
Cantor and colleagues built a computer simulation of generation after
generation of virtual whales. And they found that no other factor-like
genetics or mother-daughter teaching-could explain the emergence of the
clans and dialects in real sperm whale society. The study appears in the
journal Nature Communications. [Mauricio Cantor et al, Multilevel animal
societies can emerge from cultural transmission]
"I'm not trying to say that the types of culture the whale has are the
same as human culture. Obviously human culture is much more diverse and
complex and cumulative and symbolic. But it's very fascinating just to
see that they can have some type of similarities, they can have their own
type of culture." And maybe a better understanding of that whale culture,
he says, might persuade a few human cultures to be a bit more conservation-
minded, when it comes to whales.