Mediterranean Sperm Whales Show 2 Vocal Dialects After 20,000 Years of Isolation
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jun 24
Mediterranean Sperm Whales Show 2 Vocal Dialects After 20,000 Years of Isolation
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jun 24
Summary
Researchers identified two distinct sperm-whale vocal dialects across the Mediterranean, with western groups favoring a 3+1 click pattern and eastern groups using a faster version.
112 days of hydrophone recordings collected between 2003 and 2021 near Greece and Spain showed most codas had four clicks, but their rhythm split by basin.
The overlap was incomplete: eastern whales occasionally produced the western dialect, suggesting the two vocal systems remain related rather than fully separate.
The team says that pattern points to whales first settling the western Mediterranean, then spreading east and gradually changing their calls under partial isolation.
For a population of only a few thousand endangered whales, the finding offers a rare snapshot of how animal dialects form through social structure, separation and cultural evolution.