#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

[thepunkwolf1312]

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 🦈🩵

🦈 🐠 🦈 • 🐠 🦈 🐠 • 🦈 🐠 🦈

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

I actually don’t really like that whole idea that humans are uniquely helpless and useless as babies among the animal kingdom (“thank cod we find babies cute, because otherwise we’d be extinct”). I assume the point of it is to reeeallly hammer down how special it is that humans have become the most influential species on the planet, how we don’t need to be like other apex predators in power, but I dunno, it’s not like every other animal has a super easy and wonderful time having babies and the babies are like mini adults the moment they are born. Sure, there’s your horses and elephants and whales that learn to walk or swim soon or immediately after birth, but let’s not forget your cats, your dogs, your wittle baby birds! And baby fish and many baby invertebrates are famously “useless and helpless” too (recall what you may know about the ocean sunfish), after all, most will die very soon after hatching and many species are plankton in their first life stage as they’re unable to fight the currents. Many more animals are dependent on their parent(s) and group to live, even as they learn to walk and run and eat on their own they’re still a hassle. Having a little guy or several little guys running around who have no idea about the dangers of the world and who keep getting into situations is a lot to deal with! Perhaps what’s unique about us is that we’re dependent on parents and community for “so long”, but we also have a long lifespan to enjoy which might not be possible if we grew up very fast and we still mature faster than some other animals (recall what you may know about sturgeons and the Greenland shark)

[kuhulua]

LOOK AT IT'S LITTLE FACE

[paopu-kiddo]

25 Days of agere moodboards: 1. Favorite animal

🌊🐳🪼

[cent-scratchnsniff]

green apple flavor

[runeehyst]

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

Made one just for you my g

[primaryykiddo]

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

[olikitten]

[revllz]

I never see these images on this website so here you go, enjoy images of my beautiful amazing wife

^ this wasn’t clicked in originally but it did show up the post so have a fun thing to just idk use as a reaction image

okay now bad to hibernation bye

[azrael-kitty]

Me and @heyimflame :3 typical shenanigans