Researchers have used machine learning to decode sperm whale vocalisations and define a phonetic alphabet for the species.
Scientists may have taken a step closer to understanding the language of whales.
In an exciting new study, published in Nature Communications, researchers have revealed that sperm whale communication involves complex structures similar to human language.
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Sperm whales have the largest brain of any animal on earth. These highly intelligent creatures display complex social and foraging behaviours and are known to make decisions as a group, so communication is important.
“Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) are highly social mammals that communicate using sequences of clicks called codas,” says the study.
“While a subset of codas have been shown to encode information about caller identity, almost everything else about the sperm whale communication system, including its structure and information-carrying capacity, remains unknown.”
Researchers from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) used machine learning to analyse over eight thousand codas from The Dominica Sperm Whale Project (DSWP)’s dataset and have used the data to define a type of phonetic alphabet.
“Our findings indicate the presence of structured information content and also challenges the prevailing belief among many linguists that complex communication is unique to humans.” Daniela Rus, CSAIL director and MIT professor
The researchers discovered that sperm whales deliberately use complex combinations of clicks, which vary with conversational context, in the same way that humans might use speech or Morse code. This could allow them to convey much more information than previously believed.
“Our findings indicate the presence of structured information content and also challenges the prevailing belief among many linguists that complex communication is unique to humans,” says Daniela Rus, CSAIL director and MIT professor, in a statement.
“This is a step toward showing that other species have levels of communication complexity that have not been identified so far, deeply connected to behaviour.”
The study’s lead author Pratyusha Sharma believes learning how to interpret meaning in sperm whale language could lay the groundwork for communicating with alien civilisations: “This isn’t just about teaching animals a subset of human language but decoding a naturally evolved communication system within their unique biological and environmental constraints,” she says.
For now, though, communicating with other species is a way off as the meaning behind these vocalisations remains unknown.
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Main image: Sperm whales are animals with the largest brains to have ever existed on the planet. The contrast between the apparent simplicity of their communication system and the range of complex coordinated behaviours it enables has presented a fundamental mystery to researchers in the field. Credit: Amanda Cotton and Project CETI