ENCORE: Love your mom, and other lessons we can learn from sperm whales
Deep down in the dark ocean there's a lot of chatter going on and Marine Biologist Shane Gero wants to get in on the conversation.
Gero is the founder of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project. For a decade, he and his crew have been documenting the social and vocal behaviour of more than a dozen sperm whale families in the Caribbean to decode their dialect.
Sperm whales use a pattern of clicks, known as codas, to communicate with their families and groups. They pick up this dialect right from the start, babbling shortly after birth.
Gero spoke to The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti in March about what sperm whales are talking about and what he's learned about their society.
"We can learn a lot from listening to other ways of life, whale or otherwise."
Gero tells Tremonti that there are a "few lessons we can learn from sperm whales."
"One is 'love your mom' because these families of females nomadically traverse the darkness of the deep ocean just to care for their babies, so everyone should call their mom after they hear this interview."
Sperm whales are social animals. They travel in groups and families of grandmothers, mothers and daughters live together for life, while males leave in their early teens to roam the ocean and breed.
They're living in multicultural societies in the ocean without having wars over who's right.- Marine biologist Shane Gero on sperm whales
Gero goes on to say that his observation of whales and their need to work together and co-operate with one another showed him that "just because we do things differently doesn't mean that one way is wrong."
"They're living in multicultural societies in the ocean without having wars over who's right."
Since The Current's conversation with Gero in March, there have been new findings that show two different cultures of whales living in the Caribbean, each with their own distinct dialect of "codas."
Like humans, whales have a different cultural identity depending on where they live — whales in the Caribbean are unique and different from whales who live elsewhere.
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this post.
This segment was produced by Winnipeg network producer Suzanne Dufresne.