London, October 30 : A team of Canadian and British researchers has found that sperm whales sing duets to cement the bonds between individuals within a social group.

Researchers from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and the University of St Andrews in the UK followed a group of nine sperm whales in the Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos Islands, and seven in the Caribbean.

The team used a series of underwater hydrophones to record the whales'' characteristic clicking sounds.

They said that on 15 of the 19 occasions, when the position of each whale could be identified, the animals were close enough to see one another, suggesting that the song was not being used to locate another whale.

London, Oct 30 : English actor Sir Michael Caine has been chosen to co-present this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Concert with actress Scarlett Johansson, the organisers have revealed.

Caine, 75, had previously appeared with Johansson on screen in 2006 film The Prestige.

“Caine has appeared in over 100 films and been honoured with numerous awards,” the BBC quoted the concert''s organisers as saying in a statement.

The event, which will honour this year''s Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martti Ahtisaari, will take place in Oslo, Norway on December 11 with Diana Ross headlining it.

London, Oct 30 : Attractive couples hand their good looks down to their daughters, but have little impact on whether their sons are handsome, according to a new study.

University of St Andrews boffins have found that while both parents influence the attractiveness of their daughters, male attractiveness is not inherited.

In a study of family photographs, psychologists Professor David Perrett and Elisabeth Cornwell – now at the University of Colorado – found that while both father and mother can influence the attractiveness of their daughters, the couple''s good looks do not necessarily contribute to the attractiveness of their son as an adult.

London, Oct 30 : A research by scientists from the US and UK has suggested that far from being solitary hunters, sabretooth tigers were social animals who hunted in packs, sharing the spoils among themselves.

According to a report by BBC News, the abundance of S. fatalis (scientific name for sabretooth tigers) fossils in Californian tar seeps suggests they were packs of scavengers, lured in by the distress calls of trapped prey.

The research, carried out in Africa, found that audio playbacks of prey sounds attract social carnivores, but not solitary hunters.

This suggests S. fatalis was social too, according to the Royal Society journal study.