Humans aren’t the only members of the animal kingdom who’ll be gathering outdoors this month to socialize and to scout out potential mates. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
We’re listening to the underwater sounds of Killer whales.
“Resident Killer whales social structure is based on matrilineal groups. What this means is that a mother and her offspring stay together for life. The sons as well as the daughters stay with the female in their pod of birth.”
Craig Matkin is Director of the North Gulf Oceanic Society who tells us that around this time of year, different family groups, or pods of whales come together to socialize and breed.
“However, breeding doesn’t go on within the pod, or within matrilineal groups because the animals are too closely related and you’d have probably inbreeding populations. In fact, what our genetic work has shown is that the males seek out mates in other pods that are least closely related to them. So there is a conscious outbreeding outside the pod.
“During this time, several pods may get together. We have more than a hundred animals in four or five pods that aggregate and at this time the males will temporarily move out of their matrilineal groups and visit females in the other pod. There’s a lot of social activity, sexual activity between the juveniles. And this is when you would expect that the mating occurs. And sure enough, it’s about seventeen months later, which is the gestation period of a Killer whale, that you see the greatest number of calves born into the pods.”
Additional funding for Pulse of the Planet has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.