Sperm Whale Coda Communication: Acoustic Structure, Turn-Taking, and Sequential Response Patterns

Sperm whales communicate using patterned sequences of clicks known as codas, but understanding how these signals are organized during interaction remains challenging. This independent computational research project investigates acoustic structure, turn-taking, and sequential response patterns in sperm whale communication using publicly available datasets from the Dominica Sperm Whale Project. Four five-click coda types were analyzed using rhythmic features, clustering, and supervised classification. The classifier achieved a mean balanced accuracy of 0.997 under grouped cross-validation. Dialogue analysis revealed shorter gaps during speaker changes and identified non-random relationships between preceding and responding coda types. A repertoire-preserving permutation test found significant sequential dependence (mutual information = 0.195, p ≈ 0.0002), with notable enrichment among transitions involving 5R1 and 5R2 codas. These findings do not establish the semantic meaning of individual whale vocalizations but identify structured interaction patterns for future behavioral research. Code and analysis: https://github.com/msns4/whale-acoustic-ml Original data source: https://github.com/pratyushasharma/sw-combinatoriality