Sperm whales have ‘words’ and ‘phrases’ in their own phonetic alphabet | Tech and Science

Sperm whales, like whales and dolphins, are very social mammals. They communicate by pushing out air and making rapid clicking sounds. These can sound like an extremely loud zipper underwater. They also use the clicking sounds to track their prey.

Scientists have been trying to understand what the clicking sounds mean for decades. They still don’t know exactly, but now they think there are sequences of click sounds that form a phonetic alphabet. According to the American researchers, it can be compared to words and phrases that people use.

For their research published on Tuesday, they analyzed more than 8,700 fragments of sperm whale clicks (codas). The researchers collected these codas using microphones attached, among other things, to sperm whales. In this way, the scientists followed sixty sperm whales in their natural habitat around the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica.

The researchers have discovered four basic components that they believe form a phonetic alphabet. Lead researcher Pratyusha Sharma believes that sperm whales can use this alphabet in an unlimited number of combinations. “They don’t have a fixed set of codas,” Sharma told the news agency AP. “That gives them access to a much larger communications system.” She explains that the sperm whales therefore have a very large dictionary.

It is only a small step towards understanding the sperm whale language, but a very important one. It may take billions more codas to figure out what message the animals are trying to convey. Artificial intelligence can speed up that process, the researchers think.

Sperm whales have the largest brains of all mammals. They can weigh as much as 9 kilos and are no less than six times the size of an average human brain. The animals live in matriarchal groups of about ten sperm whales and sometimes encounter hundreds or thousands of other cetaceans. They can grow up to 18 meters long and dive 1,000 meters deep.

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