Fun with Science Club®


			Mother killer whale songs are similar to their daughters. Carrie Straight 05.14.01 Killer whales, Orcinus orca, like other whales travel around in small groups (pods). Commonly, killer whale pods consist of many matrilineal groups (the mother and her offspring). Killer whales have songs that are distinctive for each pod. Scientists wanted to know what made each pod’s songs different from another pod. Because the scientists could tell individual whales apart, they could document which pod and which matrilineal group they belonged to. Like facial features of people, the shape, color and markings on the dorsal fin of killer whales allows researchers to tell the whales apart. They then recorded the songs of each matrilineal group. They compared the songs of each matrilineal unit by displaying each song on a spectrogram, which graphically records the frequency of the notes and their lengths. They compared the songs within each pod and found that the matrilineal units within a pod had distinctive but similar calls. The similarity of calls in a matrilineal unit of killer whales may help the whales figure out if a member of a neighboring pod might be their relative.


			Miller, Patrick J. O. and David E. Bain. 2000. Within-pod variation in the sound production of a pod of killer whales, Orcinus orca. Animal Behavior 60: 617-628.