A fascinating study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that seven ancient “clans” of sperm whales living in the vast Pacific Ocean maintain their cultural identity by distinctive patterns of clicks within their songs.
It’s the first time cultural markers have been observed among whales, and they mimic markers of cultural identity among human groups, like distinctive dialects or tattoos.
NBC News reports that Bioacoustician Taylor Hersh, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen in the Netherlands and lead author of the study said that sperm whales often exchange streams of loud clicks with each other when they’re resting near the surface between dives into deeper waters — sometimes more than a mile down — for prey like squid and fish.
Analysis by H I Sutton, writing in 
The 
Ten years ago today, the replica of
The 
For the first time, the 
In August, 
Two hundred and seventeen years ago today, in 1805, the Royal Navy, commanded by 
The world’s largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship, a replica of an 18th-century Swedish East India Company ship, 
In March,