Singing a New Tune

If you move to a new part of the country, you’ll eventually start to sound a bit like the natives. Your accent might shift a little, and you’ll pick up the local dialect — the language and speech patterns that define that area.

The same thing appears to be true for killer whales. Some recent research found that orcas that are kept around bottlenose dolphins eventually start to “talk” more like the dolphins.

Killer whales are among the most vocal creatures in the oceans. They produce a combination of sounds — clicks, whistles, and pulses. Those sounds help them navigate, find prey, and communicate with other whales. But the sounds aren’t the same from one group of whales to the next. The length, pitch, and pattern of the sounds can vary.

Researchers studied three killer whales that were kept at two different marine parks, around bottlenose dolphins. The researchers compared recordings of the whales made when they were new to the parks with recordings made years later. And they found that the vocal patterns of all three whales changed — they sounded more like those of the dolphins. In particular, the whales used more clicks and whistles, which are more common among the dolphins, and fewer long pulses of sound, which are more common among the whales.

The findings suggest that killer whales are able to “rewire” their brains to help them adjust to their surroundings. To put it another way, they don’t seem to have any trouble going native.