Adult Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) Escorts in the Eastern Caribbean Modify their Coda Vocalizations in the Presence of a Calf Compared to When with Another Adult: An Investigation of Calf-Directed Communication
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Investigating whether adult female sperm whales use calf-directed communication by modifying their coda vocalizations in the presence of calves compared to other adults. This study analyzes coda length, coda type usage, and duration across escort-calf (EC) and escort-adult (EA) social contexts. Escorts with calves displayed greater diversity in coda type usage than when with another adult, potentially offering a broader exposure to their social unit’s vocal repertoire. Sperm whale escorts also adjusted their vocalizations by increasing coda duration when in the presence of a calf (EC) versus when with another adult (EA), likely emphasizing acoustic features to aid calf recognition and learning. This research provides evidence supporting the hypothesis that sperm whale escorts use calf-directed communication to assist calves vocal learning. These findings underscore the importance of escorts communication in calf vocal development and highlight the parallels between human language acquisition and vocal learning in non-human species.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".