In One Ear: Whale talk

Elleda Wilson, The Daily Astorian, Ore.
·1 min read

Humans have always wondered what sperm whales are saying to each other with their clicking noises. Now scientists, using artificial intelligence, are calling the series of sounds a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet,” and hope to discover if the clicks are actually a whale language, and if so, how to translate it, MIT News says.

Nine thousand bursts of sperm whale clicks, called codas, were recorded in the Eastern Caribbean. Then researchers from Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), using “advanced computer algorithms,” were able to discover patterns of sound, including tempo, speed and number of clicks per coda.

“We’re now starting to find the first building blocks of whale language,” Project CETI co-author and founder David Gruber told the Associated Press. Stay tuned, this ought to be interesting. (Photo: Tony Wu)