Scientists find sperm whale tribes living in clan 'nations'

Sperm whales have organised themselves into at least seven clans in the Pacific Ocean, each comprising up to 20,000 creatures and with distinctive vocal "dialects" and cultures much like those of humans, a study has found.

- Philip Hoare

Using underwater microphones and drone surveys, Hal Whitehead, a sperm whale scientist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, examined the sounds the animals made and their feeding habits.

The resulting paper, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal, said the clans were defined by variations in their vocalisations which are distinctive, morse codelike sequences of clicks.

Acting like human dialects, these enabled Whitehead and his colleagues to establish the existence of seven such clans in the Pacific - with a total of 300,000 sperm whales.

"This is a huge number for culturally defined entities outside modern human ethno-linguistic groups," Whitehead said. The clans might meet but they never interbred, he added. Their sense of identity appeared, in human terms, almost tribal, recognising and maintaining their differences while being of the same species.

Sperm whales have the biggest brains on the planet and their bodies can reach 15 metres in length, weighing up to 45 tonnes. They are present in oceans around the world.