Scientists studying sperm whales, which live around the Caribbean island of Dominica, have described for the first time the basic elements of how they can to talk to each other in an effort to help one day better protect them, the Associated Press reported.
Like many whales and dolphins, sperm whales are highly social mammals and communicate by squeezing air through their respiratory systems to emit a series of rapid "clicks" that can sound extremely strong pull on zipper under water. The clicks are also used as a form of echolocation to help them track their prey.
Scientists have been trying for decades to figure out what these clicks might mean, with minimal progress. Although they still don't know, they now believe that there are sets of clicks that they believe make up a “phonetic alphabet” which whales can use to construct a rough equivalent of what humans think of as words and phrases.
“We are now beginning to discover the first building blocks of whale language” said David Gruber, founder and president of the Cetacean Translation Initiative or CETI, an effort dedicated to translating sperm whale communication.
In a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers analyzed more than 8,700 fragments of sperm whale clicks, known as "codes". They say they have found four main components that they believe make up this phonetic alphabet.
Pratyusha Sharma, the paper's lead researcher, said this alphabet could be used by whales in an unlimited number of combinations.
„They don't seem to have a fixed set of codes,” said Sharma, an expert in artificial intelligence and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This gives the whales access to a much larger communication system” she said, explaining that whales probably have a very large vocabulary.
Sperm whales have the largest brains of any animal on the planet weighing up to 20 pounds, six times the size of the average human brain. They live in matriarchal groups of about 10 and sometimes you encounter hundreds or thousands of other whales. Sperm whales can grow up to 60 feet (18 meters) and dive to almost 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) to hunt squid. They sleep vertically, in groups.
Gruber, a professor of biology at the City University of New York, said sperm whales appear to have complex social connections, and deciphering their communication systems could reveal parallels with human language and society.
To get enough samples of the sperm whale clicks in Dominica, where there is a permanent population of about 200 whales, the scientists set up a giant underwater recording studio with microphones at different depths. Tags on the whales also record what position they are in - eg diving, sleeping, breathing at the surface - and whether there are other whales nearby with which they can communicate.
Jeremy Goldbogen, an associate professor of oceans at Stanford University, called the new research “remarkable”, stressing that it will have a “huge role in understanding the ocean giants”
Goldbogen said that if one day we can understand what the sperm whales are saying, that knowledge should be used for conservation purposes, such as minimizing the risk of ship strikes or reducing ocean noise levels.
Sperm whales are classified as “vulnerable” species from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Whales have been hunted for centuries for the oil contained in their giant heads, and the species is still recovering.
AP correspondent Jackie Quinn reports on artificial intelligence helping researchers crack the code of the building blocks of the alphabet used by sperm whales.
Diana Rice, an expert on marine mammal behavior and communication at the City University of New York, said that while scientists understand some aspects of marine animals, their communication is quite good, including the whistles used by the dolphins, and the songs sung by humpback whales.
But when it comes to sperm whales, even this basic knowledge is lacking.
„What's new about this study is that they're trying to look at the foundation for whales -- their communication system...not just specific calls they make,” she said.
Reiss said he hopes that one day we will be able to match the whales' calls with their behavior.
„We will never know what the clicks mean to another whale, but we may be able to understand what they mean to predict their behavior,” she said. “That alone would be an incredible achievement” she said.
CETI founder Gruber said it would take millions and possibly billions of whale codes to gather enough data to try to understand what the whales are saying, but he expects AI to help speed up the analysis. He said other populations of sperm whales, found in the deep oceans from the Arctic to the Antarctic, probably communicate in slightly different ways.
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