AI reveals sperm whale's 'phonetic alphabet'

AI Video & Visuals


by Katherine Latham and Anna Bresanin,

Amanda Cotton/Project CETI A family of sperm whales (Credit: Amanda Cotton/Project CETI)Amanda Cotton/Project CETI

Sperm whale communication may be similar to human language (Credit: Amanda Cotton/Project CETI)

Researchers studying sperm whale communication say they have discovered sophisticated structures that resemble those found in human language.

Amanda Cotton/Project CETI Sperm whales are constantly communicating with each other, even when they are foraging alone in the deep ocean (Credit: Amanda Cotton/Project CETI)Amanda Cotton/Project CETI

Sperm whales are constantly communicating with each other, even when they are alone foraging in the deep ocean. (Photo by Amanda Cotton/Project CETI)

“At a depth of 1,000 meters (3,300 feet), many of the pods will be lined up next to each other, facing the same direction, over distances of several kilometers,” Young says. “All the while, they're talking and clicking.” After about an hour, the pod will surface en masse, she says. “Then they rest, they might be at the surface for 15 to 20 minutes, and then they dive again,” she says.

At the end of their day's feeding, sperm whales congregate at the surface, where they socialize by rubbing bodies together and chatting, Young said. “As researchers, we don't observe their behavior very often because they don't spend that much time at the surface,” Young said. “We only see a small slice of their lives, that 15 minutes at the surface, so there's a lot we don't know about them.”

Land-dwelling whales first appeared on the planet about 47 million years ago. Pulled back towards the sea That's 47 million years of evolution in an environment different to our own. How can we so easily understand an organism that has adapted to live and communicate under evolutionary pressures completely different from our own?

“It's easier to translate the overlapping parts of our world and our children's world, like eating, feeding, sleeping,” she says. Cetacean Translation Initiative “As mammals, we share these fundamental elements with other animals, but I think it would be really interesting to try to understand areas of their world that don't intersect with humans,” said Dr. Ceti, a professor of biology at the City University of New York.

The Project CETI Dominica Sperm Whale Project has been listening to sperm whales' songs for almost 20 years (Credit: Project CETI)Project CETI

The Dominican Sperm Whale Project has been listening to sperm whale calls for almost 20 years (Courtesy of Project CETI)

We are at base camp. This is a new place for humanity. – David Gruber

Sperm whales Multi-layered, matriarchal society Males roam the ocean and visit breeding colonies. They are known for their complex social behavior. Group decision makingThey require advanced communication, for example by adapting their behavior in groups. Protect themselves from predators like killer whales or human.

Sperm whales communicate with each other A series of rhythmic clicksThese codas are called codas. Previously, sperm whales were thought to have only 21 different codas. But after studying around 9,000 recordings, the Ceti researchers identified 156 different codas. They also looked at the basic building blocks of these codas, which they call the “sperm whale phonetic alphabet”, which is very similar to phonemes, the units of sound that form words in human languages. (To hear some of the diversity of sperm whale vocalizations identified by AI, check out the video below.

The Whale's Secret Coda (Video: Anna Bresanin and Catherine Latham)

Pratyusha Sharma, a doctoral student at MIT and lead author of the study, describes the “subtle changes” in vocalizations that the AI ​​identified. Each coda is made up of between three and 40 successive clicks. They found that the sperm whales changed the overall speed, or “tempo,” of the codas, speeding up or slowing down while they were producing them — in other words, “rubato.” Sometimes they even added clicks to the end of the coda, which Sharma says is similar to “embellishments” in music. These subtle changes, she says, are what the scientists call “the ability to hear the voices of the whales as they sing.” Sperm whale vocalizations may convey much more information than previously thought.

“Some of these features are context-dependent,” Sharma says. “For example, in human languages ​​we can say 'what' or 'huh?' They're the same word, but you have to hear the whole sound to understand the meaning,” she says.

The researchers also found that sperm whales' “phonemes” are used in combination, allowing the whales to build a diverse repertoire of vocalizations. The existence of a combinatorial coding system suggests thatDuality of Pattern“A linguistic phenomenon thought to be unique to human languages ​​in which non-meaningful elements are combined to form meaningful words”

Project CETI In 2023, drone footage captured the sights and sounds of a sperm whale calf being born. Researchers are now analysing the whale's vocalisations from the event (Credit: Project CETI)Project CETI

In 2023, drone footage captured the sights and sounds of a sperm whale calf giving birth. Researchers are now analysing the whale's vocalisations from the event (Credit: Project CETI)

But Sharma stresses that this is not yet evidence: “What we've found in sperm whales is that the codas themselves are formed by a combination of these basic features, and then they're sequenced together to form coda sequences,” just like how humans combine phonemes to make words and words to make sentences.

So what does this tell us about sperm whale intelligence – or their ability to reason, or store and share information?

“We don't know anything yet,” Gruber says. “Before we can answer these startling questions, we need to figure out how.” [sperm whales communicate] And we understand what is meaningful to them. We see that they live incredibly complex lives, the coordination and sophistication of their behavior. We are at base camp. This is a new place for humans. Just give us a few more years. Thanks to artificial intelligence, we have a deeper understanding of whale communication than we've ever seen before.”

But not everyone is convinced, and experts An anthropocentric focus on language This can lead to the danger of only seeing things from one perspective.

But Young describes the study as an “incremental step” toward understanding the giants of the deep. “We're just starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together,” she says. And if we can figure out what the giants are, How important are sperm whale grandmothers? If there's something that resonates with them – with humans – then human behaviour can be changed to protect them, she says.

VulnerableAccording to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), sperm whales are still recovering from commercial whaling by humans in the 19th and 20th centuries, and although such hunting has been banned for decades, sperm whales face new threats, including: Climate change, marine noise pollution, ship collisions.

But Young adds that we're still a long way from understanding what sperm whales are saying to each other: “We have no idea, but the more we can understand about these amazing animals, the more we can learn about how to protect them.”

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