Sperm whales change their clicks when boats are nearby scientists say

Scientists have discovered that sperm whales change the sounds they make to each other when ships pass close by.

According to a new study, the marine creatures alter the pattern and timing of their clicks, almost like changing the way they speak.

Researchers studied more than a thousand whale clicks recorded over a number of years in the waters around the Caribbean island of Dominica.

The team says the findings could help experts better understand how human activity, such as busy shipping routes, affects the way sperm whales communicate.

Sperm whales use a pattern of clicks, called codas, to communicate with each other.

Scientists studying these sounds have previously found that some groups of clicks are a bit like the different vowel sounds in human speech.

For the new study, a group of experts from Project Ceti spent four years recording and studying the calls of 15 sperm whales living off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica.

The whales were fitted with small sound-recording tags, which were carefully attached using drones.

This allowed the researchers to listen to the whales' clicks as they swam and communicated with each other.

They found that when boats were nearby, the whales changed the way they made their clicks.

Instead of simply making louder sounds like some other marine animals do, sperm whales changed the speed and pattern of their clicks.

The researchers also noticed that the whales used different types of click sounds more often when ships were close.

Scientists think these changes could help the whales communicate in noisy conditions.

They hope that further research could help them understand the meaning of these different click patterns.