These new maternal groupings will remain together and travel within their matrilineal groups. Pod Moving up in the social organization of killer whales, is the pod. Pods consist of subpods that travel with one another. Pods can be distinguished based on different vocalizations, and contains between one and five subpods and between ten and fifty whales. The next level of social structure is known as a clan.
Clans consist of pods with vocal dialects that are related to one another.
At the highest level of killer whale social stucture is a community, made up of pods that have been seen travelling together during research studies. Pods from one community have not been seen to travel with those from another community. Two communities of resident whales in British Columbia are the northern residents , ranging from Vancouver Island, north to southeast Alaska and the Queen Charlotte Islands, and the southern resident community ranging from southern Vancouver Island and Puget Sound. As females make up the hierarchy of social structure for killer whales, males traditionally stay with their mothers throughout their lives a trait unique to mammalian social systems. Occasionally, males have been sighted to stray from their groups into another group, possibly for mating reasons, which helps to avoid inbreeding.