Orcas produce a wide variety of clicks, whistles and pulsed calls. They vary in frequency from 1 to 25 kHz. Individual pods of whales have their own distinctive dialect of calls, similar to songbirds. Some such calls are known to be stable over a period of 10 years. Humpback whales produce a variety of moans, snores, and groans that are repeated to form what we might call songs. The frequency of these songs range from about 40 Hz to 5 kHz.

       Singing whales are usually solitary males who exhibit it in a shallow smooth-bottomed area where sound propagates well. They are interpreted as territorial and mating calls. Whales are also known to produce some very intense low frequency sounds which they may use to stun or disorient small fish for prey. Bottlenose dolphins produce sounds in the range 7 to 15 kHz which are continuously variable in pitch. In addition, they produce short burst from 20 to 170 kHz, presumably for better echolocation.

       A dolphin's clicks come from small knobs near its blowhole. There are no vocal cords.