The culture of whales
In this article we hear from experts about the ways that different whale and dolphin species have demonstrated unique cultures, dialects and behaviour
© Dolphins, by Stepat. Via Pixabay
Big brain
Cetaceans, and specifically the sperm whale, hold the record for the world’s largest brain. More tellingly when it comes to intelligence, they have a brain:body ratio second only to our own. The kinds of brain cells, the relative size of brain regions, and the level of cerebral folding indicate that they have an enormous capacity for cognition, complex social interactions, forward-thinking, language, self-awareness, and emotion. The discovery of spindle cells in cetacean brains only drove this home. According to Whale and Dolphin Conservation UK:
Spindle cells are thought to be responsible for ‘rapid intuitive choice in complex social situations’ and are associated with emotions such as empathy. Until relatively recently it was believed that these special brain cells were only found in the brains of humans and some primates.
The wonder of dolphins
While the large whales have the brains for advanced intelligence, their often deep-sea habitats and size mean they have remained in many ways quite mysterious to us. Dolphins, on the other hand, are often friendly and curious with humans, giving us much greater opportunity to study their intelligence in a variety of ways. The video below outlines just how incredible our findings have been.
This is an additional video, hosted on YouTube.
Culture
With these levels of intelligence, communication skills, and sociability comes something even more remarkable – culture, and we have evidence for this from a wide variety of different kinds of cetaceans. According to sperm whale expert Shane Garrow, you can distinguish general behaviour from culture by sticking to a simple paradigm:
Behavior is what we do. Culture is how we do it.
The thing that defines whale culture is that different populations of the same species often live quite different lives. They speak different languages, they know different tricks, they eat different foods and, crucially, they teach each other how to do these things.
Brian Skerry, the National Geographic photographer behind the whale culture documentary Secrets of the Whales, agrees:
When you see them underwater, you realize they actually have very rich lives and complex behaviors, how they feed or what they know about their local waters, how they socialize, their parenting techniques. These animals have culture.
That’s my buddy
We have evidence that in at least some cetacean species, including the bottlenose dolphin, sperm whale, and beluga whales, individuals have distinct names – given either by their mother or pod, or proclaimed by the individual itself.
Bottlenose dolphins in a pod each have a ‘signature whistle’, something like a name, but with inflections that also convey mood or motivation. They come up with their own whistle at just a few months old (with influences from its mother and pod), and will use it when meeting a new pod, seemingly as an introduction. They will also selectively respond to their own whistle.
And they’re not the only ones; recent research has also indicated that beluga whale calves are given names by their mothers. These creatures have also been recorded seemingly mimicking human speech, in what looks like an attempt at connection. This was the case of Noc, a wild beluga trained by the US military for torpedo retrieval, who spontaneously began to make very un-beluga-like calls to the humans he knew. His story (and the recording of his human-like babble) is both astounding and disturbing.
Queen of the pod
Orca, by Jacqueline Schmid via PixabaySome dolphins are gregarious, travelling in pods ranging from a handful of individuals to thousands, sometimes including several species. Other whales live solo lives, save for mating and cows rearing their calf.
Some cetaceans though, particularly sperm whales and orca, are matriarchal. This is important because their practice of group hunting requires coordination, and decision making. Much of this decision making falls to the ‘grandmother’ of the clan.
Author and professor Alan Rauch, describes how these decisions are made:
Dolphins need to engage in group decisions while foraging for food as well as when moving locations… Dolphins must also work quickly and alertly – in concert – if predators, such as sharks, are nearby. … The older and more experienced dolphins must agree on the time of movement and the direction of movement.Dolphins can be very “outspoken.” Disagreement is signalled by tail slaps which may simply be on the surface of the water or, if there is need, a slap directed bodily at another dolphin. Other gestures of disagreement include “raking” when one dolphin runs its teeth superficially – but firmly – against the body of another dolphin, or a person. I’ve been raked, and it doesn’t hurt, but you do feel it.
Connections
Some cetaceans also seem to demonstrate affection, by touching flippers, pressing against one another, and touching lips or biting tongues.
This is an additional video, hosted on YouTube.
Other reports indicate behaviours that humans might interpret as grief (such as a mother carrying a deceased calf, or young males repeatedly visiting the spot where their mother died), or empathy (like going out of their way to rescue seals from predators, or humans from drowning).
Work and play
Tools
We learned above about the bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia that were observed fitting marine baskets sponges ripped from the sea floor over their beaks like gloves before rooting around among the rocks and coral for hidden fish.
Another example of tool use is the practice of ‘kelping’ – a widespread behaviour seen in baleen whales of playing in kelp or seaweed, and particularly wearing it as a hat. Initially thought to be just play, 2023 research suggests that the time and effort dedicated to this behaviour may also have a more practical use. The researchers suggest they’re using the kelp as a sort of skincare routine, scratching and cleaning those hard to reach (without arms) spots, particularly around the head and mouth, and preventing overgrowth of bacteria or sea lice.
The ‘in thing’
One famous expression of cetacean culture is the famous ‘k-pod’ pod of orca, that were all observed wearing dead salmon on their heads during the northern summer of 1987. Within weeks, two other pods learned of this and also took up the practice. By the next summer, the trend had ended.
This behaviour was generally accepted by scientists as being simply a cultural fad amongst this pod. There is speculation that the spate of boat-ramming by orca in mid-2023 may be another cetacean fad.
Ancestral Traditions
Diet
The advanced hunting techniques of dolphins that we looked at in an earlier step are also an example of culture. What stands out about them is that they are not widespread behaviours, so are not innate to the species. They are often very localised, sometimes seen in only one single population or pod. They are techniques that one individual figured out, and then taught to others. These tricks are passed down from generation to generation.
Similarly, distinct populations of the same cetacean species around the world choose to target only a certain prey type, even when other varieties are available, and the chosen prey type varies all over the world. This, says cetacean expert Brian Skerry, indicates a form of culture.
[M]ost humans eat food with utensils. That is behaviour. But whether you use chopsticks, or knives and forks, is culture. So we might have a population of Orca, for example, that live in New Zealand, and their … ethnic food choice is stingrays. They have figured out how to catch and eat stingrays. And they are the only Orca that do that in the world. But Orcas that live in the Norwegian Arctic like herring, a type of fish. And they figured out a strategy for eating that. And the ones in Patagonia predate on seal pups or sea lion pups. And they are the only families of Orca in the world that do that. So this is their cultural traditions. It’s what they like. And it’s the knowledge that they pass down to their offspring as well… their survival somewhat depends on that. So it is definitely this generational learning that we’re seeing.
Fine cuisine
Individuals in just three populations of bottlenose dolphins in Australia have been observed going to elaborate and careful lengths to prepare the perfect cuttlefish dinner. Because this behaviour has primarily been observed in adult females, researchers believe that mothers may be teaching this ‘recipe’ to their daughters, in yet another example of cultural transmission.
These dolphins catch their cuttlefish, and use unique techniques (some almost surgical in nature, others a little more brute force) to remove the hard cuttlebone, and squeeze out the unpalatable ink from their prey before enjoying the soft, cleansed flesh.
Language
Bottlenose dolphins, by Romuald Bézard from PixabayCetaceans communicate with their body movements like leaps and tail slaps, through touch, and through the clicks, whistles, and whale song we learned about in the last step. But those communication methods too vary among different populations of the same species.
For some researchers studying sperm whales in the Caribbean, it has become clear that different populations actually have their own distinct communication patterns. According to a National Geographic article:
These patterns are so distinct between different sperm whale groups that researchers refer to them as individual “dialects.” Whales that share the same dialect feed together, take care of each other’s calves, and they’ll even steer clear of other groups of sperm whales nearby who don’t speak their same language. And, really importantly – embedded in these different whale cultures is critical information about how to survive in the local environment.
Another interview expands on this:
[We’ve] identified maybe 24 families that belong to … a clan. They all speak the same dialect, and they don’t intermingle with other sperm whales that might move into those waters. The first thing they do when they see another sperm whale is they say, ‘I am from Dominica.’ And if the other sperm whale says, ‘I am from Haiti’ or someplace, they go their separate ways.I think we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I really believe that these animals have far richer societies, more complex behaviors and cultures, that perhaps that will take a lot more time to understand.
Protecting cultures
One major takeaway from our growing understanding of whale culture is that our conservation efforts must take a different view. We cannot just speak of protecting particular species, or even populations, because even within a population, there may be multiple smaller, and more vulnerable, cultures that we stand to lose.
As Brian Skerry explains it:
If we lose a whale culture, the knowledge and the wisdom that those animals know will be gone forever. And it would be analogous to losing a human culture. You know if we lose an Inuit culture in the Arctic and they’re gone forever and you take a guy like me, you know an Irish guy from Boston you stick him up in that place, I’m not going to know how to function.I’m not going to know the things that those ancient cultures knew and the wisdom that they possess and that’ll, that’ll never come back. Just because these are deep ocean animals that we only get brief glimpses of doesn’t mean that they don’t have complex societies.
In the next step we’ll learn about whale reproduction, and how an air-breathing baby mammal manages being born in the middle of the ocean!
Further Resources
On animal cameras reveal hidden whale world, BBC Earth
Scientific evidence for whale and dolphin rights
Inside the secret culture of whales, from favorite foods to family names, NKCRW
Life in the pod: the social lives of whales, Australian Natural History Museum
Why male dolphin buddies hold hands, National geographic
Sperm Whales in Caribbean Have Distinct Culture, National Geographic
Sperm Whales’ Language Reveals Hints of Culture, National Geographic
The pioneering science that unlocked the secrets of whale culture, National Geographic
Like us, whales have culture. But how do you photograph it?, National Geographic
How do whales show their emotions?, Whales Online
The secret culture of killer whales, National Geographic
Do Whales Have Culture? Humpbacks Pass on Behavior, National Geographic
What is ‘kelping’? Why whales are making hats out of seaweed, National Geographic
Why a whale’s world is a world of sound, National Geographic
These fishermen-helping dolphins have their own culture, National Geographic
Why are orcas suddenly ramming boats?, BBC
© Te Papa. All rights Reserved
This article is from the online course:
The Significance of Whales to Aotearoa New Zealand
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The Significance of Whales to Aotearoa New Zealand
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