Scientists discover sperm whale alphabet full of ‘words and syllables’

When two sperm whales descend into the ocean, for example in search of a tasty snack of squid, they maintain close contact with each other through a complex array of clicking sounds. But even when a new calf is welcomed into the herd, there is enthusiastic clicking.

To an untrained ear it sounds like an unrecognizable cacophony, but new American research shows that the conversation of hunting sperm whales consists of completely different sounds than that of partying species. In both cases, sperm whales use the same recurring sounds, which they combine to produce new utterances, somewhat similar to syllables and words as humans know them.

Using microphones, including those attached to sperm whales themselves, the scientists collected 8,719 codas, as they call the sentences of the sperm whale language. In this way, the researchers followed sixty sperm whales in their natural habitat in the Eastern Caribbean Sea, which provided an authentic picture of their communication. The researchers then linked the thousands of codas to the situations in which sperm whales used them. This allowed certain sequences of click sounds to be linked to individual sperm whales, which use the sound sequences to identify themselves to conspecifics.

The researchers used artificial intelligence to pick apart the almost nine thousand codas in search of underlying structures. To explain the animal communication that is strange to humans, scientists used terminology from the music world; such as ‘rubato’ for changes in the rhythm between clicks, or ‘ornamentation’ for clicks that the sperm whales subtly added to a series of clicks. Within this musical structure, recurring elements were found, which were used by sperm whales in different situations as building blocks for the click language.

Low howling sounds

“The research proves that people may not be unique in their ability to combine sounds to express themselves in new ways,” says Leonie Cornips, who conducts research into communication between cows. She also calls the research interesting because it only looks at the interactions between sperm whales. ‘There are all kinds of unexpected expressions in conversations between peers,’ she says. For example, the cows Cornips examines only make certain low low sounds to each other when no one is around.

The recurring structures from the codas of sperm whales serve as a kind of ‘phonetic alphabet’ of their language, says Cornips. But this research doesn’t say much about what the sperm whales are talking about in all those codas.’ More research is needed before ‘sperm whale’ appears as a language in Google Translate.

But even if such a translation aid for animal languages ​​were to be created, Cornips warns, being able to translate something does not always equate to understanding it – a distinction that also applies to human languages: ‘Our birthday party is in English birthday party. But a Dutch person is more likely to think about sitting together in a circle.’