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Whales Have Their Own Dialects

January 4, 2019

Like different human social groups, short-finned pilot whales living off the coast of Hawai’i have their own sorts of vocal dialects, according to a new study by WHOI researchers. “It’s sort of like if you’ve got hipsters and prep kids in the same high school—each group has different slang,” says Amy Van Cise, a postdoctoral scholar in the Sensory Ecology and Bioacoustics Lab at WHOI and lead author of the study. “They identify themselves with certain speech to maintain that separation.” The discovery may help researchers understand the whales’ complex social structure. (NMFS permit #15530) (Photo by Amy van Cise, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)