The last scientific record of a sperm whale birth was 1986, without audio or video. New recordings of the whales’ behavior during the birth will give researchers new insight.

The team analyzed recordings of 8,719 codas from around 60 whales collected by the Dominica Sperm Whale Project between 2005 and 2018, using a mix of algorithms for pattern recognition and ...

Sharma’s team sourced a record of codas from the dataset of the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, a long-term study on sperm whales that recorded and annotated 8,719 individual codas made by EC-1, a ...

The study authors defined four features in codas: rhythm, tempo, rubato and ornamentation. Rhythm describes the sequence of intervals between clicks. Tempo is the duration of the entire coda.

“These codas were more about bonding,” Whitehead said, when asked what kinds of messages sperm whales might be sending to one another.