In addition, we can look at the presence or absence of mature males, because they too, have very distinctive and characteristic sounds. Finally, and perhaps the most tricky of all, we can estimate the body length of the clicking whale. A click characteristic called the 'inter-pulse' interval, is correlated to overall sperm whale length. This then relates to age, so we have overall demographics, very similar to how we would do this for a human population. The codas too, have a lot of uses, the codas give us cues to likely social activities, such as group aggregations, when lots of different groups come together, sometimes forming major groups of fifty, or even one hundred or two hundred animals.
Codas give cues to aerial behaviors, including lobtailing and breaches.
Codas also give us a view of the change in dive routines of sperm whales and changes in foraging course for instance. So in a way, codas sometimes preclude a decision making process within the sperm whale community. The meeting and splitting up of groups, often have extensive and spectacular coda sessions associated with it. Finally, we can measure regional connectivity by looking at coda dialects. So the monotonous sounding clicks coming through the hydrophone, is truly a window into sperm whale ecology.