Orcinus Orca Research Paper

Orcas, or killer whales, are highly social, carnivorous sea-mammals belonging to the dolphin family, Delphinidae. Orcas (Orcinus orca) belong to stable social groups that are organized along maternal lines, which can extend up to four generations of maternally related orcas. Each pod possesses culturally transmitted vocal behaviors that are unique to each social group, giving pods their own dialect. The orca's vocal repertoire consists of clicks, whistles and pulsed calls. The calls can vary in duration, pitch and pulse pattern depending on the pod to which the orca belongs. Pulsed calls have been proposed to be the dominant form of social communication. Due to the complexity of their vocal repertoire, orcas have been interesting subjects …show more content…
Production learning occurs when an animal can make modifications to their own vocalizations based on a comparison of the vocalizations experienced by other individuals. This is accomplished when the activity of muscles of the vocal apparatus itself is modified by experience. Vocal production learning has been demonstrated widely in birds but in few mammals, including greater horseshoe bats, other marine mammals and humans. For example, grey parrots, Psittacus erithacus, are particularly good at vocal production learning. One can teach a parrot how to iterate the vocalization "apple" and the parrot can replicate this sound with relative ease. The vocalization "apple" was not in the parrot's vocal repertoire prior to human exposure. Producing the sound required that the parrot can perceive the acoustic features of the given sound, store it in the memory, and control its vocal anatomy to reproduce the sound so it matches the original. Contextual learning occurs when an animal learns to use acoustically innate or already learned vocalizations in a new context. It can be detected by changes in statistical rates of vocalizations recognizably within an animal's repertoire. This form is much more common in mammals. For example, contextual learning is the common mode of learning the predator alarm calls. Juvenile vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) learn through social experience …show more content…
O. Miller, and A. Rus Hoelzel. This study was also conducted in an uncontrolled environment in the range of a pod belonging to the pacific northeast. The study focused on two specific orcas that dispersed from their natal group, which is uncommon in these orcas. The researchers used recordings and visual identification of the two orcas to compare vocal behavior before and after dispersal. Analyzing 100 hours of recordings over nearly 30 years, Foote et. al. found that one of the orcas, L98, was able to mimic the bark of a California sea lion (Zalophus californianus). An analysis of a spectrogram of the bark-call made by L98 when no sea lions were around showed a high degree of similarity with a stereotypical sea lion bark (Figure

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