Departamento de Oceanografia e Pescas e Instituto do Mar- Universidade dos Açores, Horta, Açores, Portugal.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2013 May;133(5):3135-44. doi: 10.1121/1.4795798.
Sperm whales produce different click types for echolocation and communication. Usual clicks and buzzes appear to be used primarily in foraging while codas are thought to function in social communication. The function of slow clicks is less clear, but they appear to be produced by males at higher latitudes, where they primarily forage solitarily, and on the breeding grounds, where they roam between groups of females. Here the behavioral context in which these vocalizations are produced and the function they may serve was investigated. Ninety-nine hours of acoustic and diving data were analyzed from sound recording tags on six male sperm whales in Northern Norway. The 755 slow clicks detected were produced by tagged animals at the surface (52%), ascending from a dive (37%), and during the bottom phase (11%), but never during the descent. Slow clicks were not associated with the production of buzzes, other echolocation clicks, or fast maneuvering that would indicate foraging. Some slow clicks were emitted in seemingly repetitive temporal patterns supporting the hypothesis that the function for slow clicks on the feeding grounds is long range communication between males, possibly relaying information about individual identity or behavioral states.
抹香鲸会发出不同类型的咔嗒声用于回声定位和交流。通常的咔嗒声和嗡嗡声似乎主要用于觅食，而尾音则被认为在社交交流中起作用。慢速咔嗒声的功能不太清楚，但它们似乎是在高纬度地区由雄性产生的，在那里它们主要独自觅食，在繁殖地，它们在成群的雌性之间漫游。在这里，研究了这些发声的行为背景以及它们可能起到的作用。在挪威北部的六只雄性抹香鲸的声音记录标签上，分析了 99 小时的声学和潜水数据。在 755 次检测到的慢速咔嗒声中，有 52%是在标记动物浮出水面时产生的，37%是在潜水上升时产生的，11%是在底部阶段产生的，但从未在下降时产生。慢速咔嗒声与嗡嗡声的产生、其他回声定位咔嗒声或表明觅食的快速机动无关。一些慢速咔嗒声似乎以重复的时间模式发出，支持这样的假设，即在觅食地，慢速咔嗒声的功能是雄性之间的远程通信，可能传递关于个体身份或行为状态的信息。
