The Whalphabet: Scientists Come Closer to Understanding Whale Communication

Photo Credit: Ray Harrington/Unsplash

Scientists from the New York-based Project CETI, with the help of artificial intelligence, have found patterns in the calls of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) and translated them into a phonetic alphabet.

As part of this research, sperm whale calls have been recorded for over 15 years off the shores of Dominica, a Caribbean island. These calls have been observed from around 60 sperm whales through devices on their backs. The devices recorded audio and tracked locations, time of day and ocean temperature.

The researchers used artificial intelligence on the audio recordings to try to understand the patterns in which these whales communicate. They found out that clicks from whales were the building blocks of their communication, similar to a phonetic alphabet. Sequences of these distinct clicks form phrases called codas.

“Sperm whale vocalisations are more expressive and structured than previously believed, and built from a repertoire comprising nearly an order of magnitude more distinguishable codas,” read the abstract of a paper in Nature Communications authored by Pratyusha Sharma et al.

While there is no known meaning to these codas, Shane Gero, one of the co-authors of the study first published in Nature Communications, explained that the next step of this research is to understand the function of the calls better. Since sperm whales are highly social creatures with deep familial relationships, knowing the context of each whale call could help scientists understand these conversations. 

The Nature paper reported that the codas are “sensitive to the conversational context in which they occur, and systematically controlled and imitated across whales.” Considering that there are thousands of recorded calls from these whales, which differ in sound, pitch, length, and sequence, there is much more research to be done. 

As this research continues, ethical dilemmas about human and sperm whale relationships have begun to surface, especially considering the possible development of a way to communicate back to whales. However, Gero noted that this could still be a long way off, if it ever occurs.