New research out of SeaWorld San Diego suggests killer whales can learn new dialects.
That's right, orcas have dialects. In the wild, members of different pods make distinct sounds. Scientists suspect orcas might use these dialects to distinguish who's in their group and who's an outsider.
But orcas aren't stuck with one dialect for life according to Ann Bowles, researcher at the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute.
In a small study published this week, she observed two young orcas at SeaWorld picking up new sounds. They seemed to learn them by socializing with an unrelated adult who had a different repertoire of noises.
"This is not a particularly normal thing in mammals," Bowles notes. "We really don't know much about who they learn from, how they learn, why they learn. Why are these guys different from a dog or a cat, that doesn't have a dialect?"
In recent years, SeaWorld has come under fire for using orcas in theme park shows. But Sea World contends keeping orcas in captivity is necessary for research like this.
