Killer whales are expert vocal mimics

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- Killer whales in Canadian waters are vocal expert mimics and can impersonate calls from another whale clan or group with a different dialect, researchers say.

Wild orcas near Vancouver Island in British Columbia have been found to mimic calls from other groups even when members of that group aren't around, AAAS ScienceMag.org reported.

Behavioral biologist Brigitte Weiss of the University of Vienna says the calls seem to resemble the calls of foreign groups that the original group may have mingled with to mate or cement alliances.

The whales could have multiple uses for the imitation, such as labeling outsiders or keeping tabs on their location, she says.

"Mimicking another group's calls could be a way of referring to that group ... or of communicating something about that group to one's own family members," she says.

Or, Weiss acknowledges, it's equally possible the mimicry has no function at all.

"Most likely, the answer lies somewhere in between," she says.