All told, the scientists who collect these sounds typically have found about forty different sounds that wild orcas will make in their social interactions with other orcas, and these sounds are usually specific to a single family group. This appears to be a fairly limited vocabulary, at least on first hearing. Any linguist hoping to catch glimpses of language therein may well be disappointed. Nonetheless, the distinctive social-group-oriented nature of the calls is deep enough that even scientists are comfortable referring to them as “dialects.”
Orca dialects
About 40 common sounds
