Sperm Whale "Phonetic Alphabet" Surprisingly Similar In Structure To Human Language

[Judi Lynn]

PUBLISHED
4 days ago

For the first time, scientists have described some of the basic elements of how they may be "talking" to each other.



Sometimes the whales take turns to communicate, or all "talk" at once with many overlapping clicks.

Image Credit: Amanda Cotton

Cetaceans have long been famous for their communication abilities. From the impressive clicks and whistles of dolphins to the magical sound of humpback whale song. Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) have been known to communicate too, and new research has made a big leap forward in understanding the structure of their vocalizations.

Sperm whales are highly social, living in pods of around 15-20 animals. They communicate with one another through a series of clicks called codas. While it was previously known that some of these clicks told other whales which whale was "talking" and that different clans had different dialects, very little else has been known about their communication.

Now, scientists focussed on understanding variations in the structure of these codas and found that the codas could be combined in different ways, with the musical concepts of rubato and ornamentation, as well as rhythm and tempo. These four classifications were seen to be combined in a multitude of different ways, making many distinguishable codas from the whale vocalizations. This helped them develop what they have dubbed a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet”.

“Investigating a dataset collected across over a decade of nearly 9,000 codas from the sperm whale families of the Eastern Caribbean clan, our results show that these whales have a more complex combinatorial communication system that demonstrates rubato and ornamentation, in which whales make sub-second adjustments to match one another as they converse and add extra clicks to known coda types depending on the context within their conversations," said Dr Shane Gero, Biology Lead of Project CETI and co-founder of the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, in statement sent to IFLScience.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/sperm-whale-phonetic-alphabet-surprisingly-similar-in-structure-to-human-language-74097