Whale song is calming and ethereal, and a lot more complex than once thought. Take a recent example — earlier this year, an international team of researchers discovered that the calls of humpbacks contained language-like structures remarkably similar to ours.
It turns out that, like human language, whale song contains recurring segments, which appear in patterns that appear to make them easier to learn. For example, snippets that occurred more frequently tended to be shorter.
It must be said that the songs themselves are not akin to language in the way we understand it. It is not yet clear whether these vocalizations transfer meaning, for instance, or can more aptly be compared to music, which also contains recurring segments.
But it does suggest we share some key features of language with other animals that also learn via cultural transmission, or information passed from one individual to another. It also reveals patterns in animal communication that could one day be interpreted and help improve our understanding of the inner lives of other species.
What Is Language?
Language is not simply a word or a sound that is associated with a specific meaning. It is a complex system that enables us to transform a relatively small number of sounds (phonemes) into words, phrases, and sentences that, in turn, allow us to convey an almost infinite range of meanings. This is the difference between your pet Labrador associating the word “walkies” with a certain activity and engaging in a heated debate over where to spend the holidays.
It was once thought that language was unique to humans, but the paper on humpback songs is just one example within a growing body of research highlighting the complexity of animal communication.
In two studies published this year, researchers have shown that both bonobos and chimpanzees demonstrate a capacity for compositionality. This means they can combine different calls to convey a range of meanings, just as we do when we combine words to make sentences.
A similar capacity for compositional syntax has been identified in birds, specifically the Japanese great tit. In other studies, scientists have shown that meerkats exchange calls with their peers, dolphins and elephants have individual “names,” and sperm whales possess something not dissimilar to the phonetic alphabet.
Cracking the Code
This begs the question: if animal vocalizations display certain patterns similar (if not directly comparable to) human language, is it possible to work out what they are saying?
There are incentives for anyone who can crack the code, with the Coller Dolittle Challenge offering $10 million equity investment or $100,000 cash for breakthroughs in the field. Meanwhile, the proliferation of machine learning models opens up the possibility of scanning vast datasets of audio and visual signals in an attempt to detect patterns that could signify a specific meaning.
Google’s DolphinGemma is one example. Developed with the Wild Dolphin Project and Georgia Institute of Technology, it aims to interpret the clicks and whistles of dolphins to the point where it may be possible to produce a realistic response. The Earth Species Project is another. The team aims to understand species communication across the animal kingdom using the first audio-language model for bioacoustics.
Elsewhere, AI is being used to support research into animal communication. Laela Sayigh from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution used AI to trawl through decades of data on dolphin vocalizations, finding 50 percent of whistles did not reference an individual dolphin. (The paper is currently in preprint.) Meanwhile, the discovery of a “phonetic alphabet” in sperm whales involved complex pattern recognition algorithms.
AI is still in its infancy — so watch (or rather listen to) this space.
Read More: Bonobos Communicate Like Humans, At Least When It Comes to Combining Calls
Article Sources:
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- Science, Whale song shows language-like statistical structure
- Science Advances, Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion
- Science, Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos
- Nature Communications, Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls
- PNAS, Signature whistle shape conveys identify information to bottlenose dolphins
- Nature Ecology & Evolution, African elephants address one another with individually specific name-like calls
- Animal Behaviour, Call concatenation in wild meerkats
- Science, Toothed whales use distinct vocal registers for echolocation and communication
- bioRxiv, First evidence for widespread sharing of stereotyped non-signature whistle types by wild dolphins
- Jeremy Coller Foundation, Researchers Awarded $100,000 for Identifying First Evidence of Possible Language-like Communication in Dolphins
