meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Science Quickly

Do Sperm Whales Have Culture?

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

These marine mammals are very hard to observe, but in the past two decades the roughly 20 or so people in the world who study sperm whales have found some compelling evidence of culture among them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yachtold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:20.1

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-Lt.c-O.jp.jp. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:32.1

Hal Whitehead can tell you exactly where he was when he discovered that sperm whales

0:35.6

don't all speak the same dialect. Luke Rendell and I made our big discovery off the Galapagos Islands.

0:41.3

The sperm whales they were studying seemed to live in two adjacent but distinct groups, each with its own dialect.

0:47.3

One clan whose social vocalizations, which were coders, went kind of click, click, click, click.

0:55.8

And the other went click, click, click, click with a pause before the last one.

1:03.5

I'm Hal Whitehead.

1:04.9

I'm a professor of biology at Dalhousie University in Canada.

1:10.2

That was a fundamental discovery.

1:12.6

And then we began to show that there were a number of other behavioral characteristics

1:19.6

which differed between the clans.

1:21.6

How they travel, how they feed and reproduce, how they babysit their calves.

1:26.6

And then clans started being found in other parts of the world.

1:31.8

These marine mammals are very hard to observe, but in the past two decades, the roughly

1:36.1

20 or so people in the world who study sperm whales have found some compelling evidence

1:40.6

of culture among them.

1:42.3

Howe summarized these findings in a review paper published in Royal Society Open Science in January?

1:48.0

And he asked a natural follow-up question,

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scientific American, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scientific American and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.