Taylor Hersh

“analyzed codas recorded over almost 20 years”

“Sperm whales entered the Mediterranean via the Strait of Gibraltar about 20,000 years ago”

“identified by their use of a single coda 90% of the time”

“5,291 codas recorded between 2003 and 2021”

“there were four instances of eastern whales using the western dialect”

“It's probably happening on the scale of hundreds and thousands of years, because sperm whales can live into their 60s and 70s. And this study is looking over 19 years of data”

“Hersh, T. A., Alexiadou, P., Brotons, J. M., Cerdà, M., Pirotta, E., Frantzis, A., & Rendell, L. (2026). Dialect variation in Mediterranean sperm whales shows evidence of cultural evolution in an iso…”