#whale communication

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Ever since the discovery of whale songs almost 60 years ago, scientists have been trying to decipher their lyrics. Are the animals producing complex messages akin to human language? Or sharing simpler pieces of information, like dancing bees do? Or are they communicating something else we don’t yet understand?

In 2020, a team of marine biologists and computer scientists joined forces to analyze the click-clacking songs of sperm whales, the gray, block-shaped leviathans that swim in most of the world’s oceans. On Tuesday, the scientists reported that the whales use a much richer set of sounds than previously known, which they called a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet.”

People have a pho-ne-tic alphabet too, which we use to produce a practically infinite supply of words. But Shane Gero, a marine biologist at Carleton University in Ottawa and an author of the study, said it’s unclear whether sperm whales similarly turn their phonetic sounds into a language.

Since 2005, Dr. Gero and his colleagues have followed a clan of 400 sperm whales around Dominica, an island nation in the eastern Caribbean, eavesdropping on the whales with underwater microphones and tagging some of the animals with sensors.

Sperm whales don’t produce the eerie melodies sung by humpback whales, which became a sensation in the 1960s. Instead, they rattle off clicks that sound like a cross between Morse code and a creaking door. Sperm whales typically produce pulses of between three and 40 clicks, known as codas. They usually sing these codas while swimming together, raising the possibility that they’re communicating with one another.

Over the years, Dr. Gero and his colleagues have reviewed thousands of hours of recordings of the undersea noise. It turns out that sperm whale codas fall into distinct types.

All told, the researchers identified 156 different codas, each with distinct combinations of tempo, rhythm, rubato and ornamentation. Dr. Gero said that this variation is strikingly similar to the way humans combine movements in our lips and tongue to produce a set of phonetic sounds.

A single sound like “ba,” or “na” carries no semantic meaning on its own. But we can combine them into meaningful words like “banana.” The researchers raised the possibility that sperm whales might combine features of codas to convey meaning in a similar way.

Other experts said the whale alphabet marked an exciting advance. But they said sperm whale codas might be more akin to music than language.

[reesieroo-spark]

Tropical dudes!!!!

[runeehyst]

Whale Shark Pride pt.2🐳🏳️‍🌈

[chargethepup]

Reef stimboard :3

I love reef :3

[revllz]

My wife, y’all

She has anger issues but dw she agreed to get anger management for me and the kids

[tha-creature230307]

i see a lot of posts made by nonhumans harping on human kind. one thing that will always amaze me is that they often go out of their way to help those of different species.

turtle in the road?

dog in a lake?

deer stuck in the mud?

humans ARE kind.

[strawberrypuppyy]

🐋🐡 Whale Shark Stimboard 🦈🩵

🦈 🐠 🦈 • 🐠 🦈 🐠 • 🦈 🐠 🦈

[sweetbeagaming]

cozy log cabin camper 🚌

camper id: 7625 1591 190

[paopu-kiddo]

25 Days of agere moodboards: 1. Favorite animal

🌊🐳🪼

[primaryykiddo]

I love sharks SO much !! 🦈 especially !! whale sharks !! what's your favorite shark ?? ⭐

[olikitten]

[runeehyst]

your whale sharks are so cool!!! do you have an aroallo whale shark :0

Made one just for you my g

[hobgobknowsbest]

I for one side with the whales

Kind of the obvious choice, really

[informationatlas]

Scientists believe that the remarkable intelligence of beluga whales is demonstrated by their ability to learn and communicate using the complex language of whistles and clicks. This has been observed in a specific case where a beluga whale, living in captivity alongside a pod of bottlenose dolphins, has successfully acquired and adopted their unique language.

(via Beluga whale learns to 'talk' to pod of bottlenose dolphins )

[porcelainerose]

violon umbrella

[0rmtz]

mermay pt 4: bumblebee as a gold gourami!