What are sperm whales saying? Researchers find a complex 'alphabet'

Primary Topic

This episode delves into the intricate communication patterns of sperm whales, exploring how technology might unravel their sophisticated 'alphabet' and potential language.

Episode Summary

In this fascinating episode of "Short Wave," host Regina Barber and NPR's climate correspondent Lauren Sommer discuss the complex communication of sperm whales, revealing research that employs artificial intelligence to decode their 'alphabet' of clicks—codas. Researchers like Shane Garrow have observed these whales closely, noting their social structures and how they use sounds to navigate and interact in the ocean's depths. The episode highlights the collaborative efforts involving AI to analyze thousands of whale communications, discovering structured patterns that suggest a linguistic complexity previously underestimated. The implications of understanding and potentially interacting with sperm whale communication are also pondered, emphasizing both the ethical considerations and the profound impact humans have on these majestic creatures.

Main Takeaways

  1. Sperm whales use a sophisticated system of codas to communicate, which are patterns of clicks used repeatedly.
  2. Artificial intelligence is pivotal in deciphering these patterns, indicating a complex, structured communication system.
  3. The research challenges the traditional view that complex language might be unique to humans.
  4. Understanding sperm whale communication could profoundly impact conservation efforts and human interaction with marine life.
  5. Ethical considerations arise concerning how, or if, humans should attempt to communicate back to these whales.

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction to Whale Communication

Regina Barber introduces the topic and discusses initial thoughts on whale sounds with Lauren Sommer, likening them to familiar noises. Regina Barber: "So, Lauren, I'm not gonna lie. This whale chatter kinda sounds like bike spokes to me." Lauren Sommer: "Yeah. I kinda get, like, Morse code combined with microwave popcorn."

2: The Science of Whale Sounds

The complexity of sperm whale communication is revealed through their social behaviors and use of codas. Shane Garrow: "It's hard not to see cousins playing while chatting, to not see moms hand over to a babysitter and exchange a few words before sort of walking out the door, so to speak, to go eat in the deep ocean."

3: Technological Advances in Research

Discussion on how AI and machine learning are being used to break down and analyze the structure of whale communication. Lauren Sommer: "Researchers are hoping artificial intelligence could tease out what the whales are saying. And as a first step, they've figured out a sort of sperm whale Alphabet."

4: Ethical and Philosophical Implications

Exploration of the ethical considerations and philosophical questions surrounding the potential to communicate with whales. Regina Barber: "And if we could figure out what sperm whales are saying, should we try to talk to them?"

Actionable Advice

  1. Support marine conservation efforts to help protect the habitats of sperm whales.
  2. Increase awareness about the impact of human activities like shipping and plastic pollution on marine life.
  3. Engage with and support technological research that aids in the understanding of animal communication.
  4. Consider the ethical implications of interacting with wildlife, especially in terms of communication.
  5. Foster a broader public understanding of marine biology and its relevance to ecological balance.

About This Episode

Scientists are testing the limits of artificial intelligence when it comes to language learning. One recent challenge? Learning ... whale! Researchers are using machine learning to analyze and decode whale sounds — and it's just as complicated as it seems.

People

Shane Garrow, Daniela Rus, Taylor Hirsch

Companies

MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Transcript

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Regina Barber
You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Hey, short waivers. Regina Barber here. So when I think about whale songs, I think this, but not this.

That's a family of sperm whales. Here today to tell us more about this whale conversation is NPR's climate correspondent Lauren Sommer. Hey, Lauren, welcome back.

Lauren Sommer
Hey, Gina.

Regina Barber
So, Lauren, I'm not gonna lie. This whale chatter kinda sounds like bike spokes to me.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. I kinda get, like, Morse code combined with microwave popcorn.

Regina Barber
Mm, microwave popcorn. I need to eat lunch. Okay. So hearing these sounds makes me wonder, like, are these whales really talking to each other? And, like, what are they saying?

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. What is happening there? You're not alone in wondering that. It's kind of this age old question, like, what are animals saying?

Regina Barber
Right. Of course.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. And especially whales, because sperm whales have big brains, they have close family groups, and they coordinate a lot. They dive together, they hunt together. They even babysit for each other. Shane Garrow, who is a sperm whale biologist who has spent years with these whales, he says he sees that kind of family dynamic all the time.

Shane Garrow
It's hard not to see cousins playing while chatting, to not see moms hand over to a babysitter and exchange a few words before sort of walking out the door, so to speak, to go eat in the deep ocean.

Regina Barber
Oh, my gosh. I can relate to this a lot as, like, the older cousin babysitter and as a mom.

But as someone who has listened to, like, a lot of audio, these sounds sound pretty complicated to decode. They have so many clicks.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah, it sounds pretty messy. It's not easy for us to figure out, but that's where computers are coming in. Researchers are hoping artificial intelligence could tease out what the whales are saying. And as a first step, they've figured out a sort of sperm whale Alphabet.

Regina Barber
Ooh, okay. An Alphabet. So this is starting to sound like a language.

Lauren Sommer
Language. Okay. That's the tricky word here. It's kind of a tough question. There's been a very heated debate for years about whether animals can have language or whether that's something special that only we humans can claim.

Regina Barber
So today on the show, how technology is helping us figure out the mysteries of animal communication.

And if we could figure out what sperm whales are saying, should we try to talk to them? I'm Regina Barbour, and you're listening to shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

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Regina Barber
So, Lauren, sperm whales are somewhat famous for being, like, in Moby Dick, but what are their lives actually like?

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. So sperm whales are divers.

They're the size of a school bus. They kind of have those big foreheads, for lack of a better term, foreheads. And they spend most of their time diving in the deep ocean, searching for their favorite food, which is squid.

Regina Barber
Me too.

Lauren Sommer
They can go thousands of feet below the surface. And so Shane told me they are in the dark a lot.

Shane Garrow
So sound is everything to sperm whales in the darks of the deep ocean. These are places where sunlight never gets to.

So they navigate their world through sound, just like bats in the dark sky. They use echolocation, and they use sound to stay in touch with one another and coordinate with the families in which they live. Wow.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah.

Regina Barber
It's also just hard to see underwater. Right. In general. So I can see how sound would rule almost like everything.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. Yeah. And they live in these tight knit groups. They're female led, so there's grandmothers, mothers and daughters. They all stay together their entire lives. The males get to hang out until they're adolescents, and then they have to leave to head out on their own.

Regina Barber
Well, I totally would love watching, like, these whales family dynamics, right?

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. Cause they live a long time. And Shane studies these whales in the Caribbean with the Dominica sperm whale project.

He knows these families, and they vocalize a lot. They have long exchanges with each other.

Shane Garrow
It's not rude in sperm whale society to talk at the same time and overlap one another.

Regina Barber
It sounds like an extended family. Like loud summer barbecue.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. A lot going on. It sounds kind of messy. But actually all those clicks can be broken up into patterns of clicks and they're ones that the whales use over and over. They're called codas.

Shane Garrow
One that's really common in the Caribbean is the one plus one plus three coda, which sounds like this, you know, one plus one plus three sounds like a salsa dance.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. It's cha cha, cha cha.

Regina Barber
Yeah.

Lauren Sommer
It's cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha.

Yeah.

Regina Barber
So what sounds like a whole bunch of, like, clicking is actually like these discrete units, these discrete chunks.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah, yeah. All kind of strung together. And family groups can have dozens of these different codas. They all have a different number of clicks or a different pattern of clicks.

Wow. And researchers like Shane, you know, they've been recording these for years because they've been trying to tease out the patterns and how the whales use them. And more recently, they teamed up with artificial intelligence researchers in a collaboration called Project SETI. And their goal, using that technology, is to decode what the whales are saying.

Regina Barber
So AI has been learning human languages and researchers are trying to, like, test the limits of what it can do. But learning whale seems really complicated for sure.

Lauren Sommer
Yes.

You know, they kind of took this first step where they used machine learning to analyze more than 9000 recordings of sperm whales.

Regina Barber
Wow.

Lauren Sommer
And Daniela Rus, who directs MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory, she told me it was key to use computers because it could find clicks that humans couldn't find on their own.

Daniela Rus
It really turned out that sperm whale communication was indeed not random or simplistic, but rather structured in a very complex combinatorial manner.

Lauren Sommer
They found far more variation than researchers thought there was. Like Shane says, sometimes it's the same coda, the same set of clicks, but they make it slightly longer.

Shane Garrow
So that one plus one plus three coda we talked about might be half a second long, or it might be 1.3 seconds long, nearly three times as long. Right.

And the same whale will make short ones and long ones, and different families will make short ones and long ones.

Lauren Sommer
Which kind of sounds like this.

Regina Barber
That's subtle, right?

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. To us humans. But whales actually pick up on these differences and they even repeat them back to each other. So, you know, sometimes it's the tempo of the clicks that's different. Sometimes the whales throw in an extra click at the end of the coda, Daniela says.

Daniela Rus
And this was very interesting. We started wondering, is this extra click sort of like the end of a sentence or something else?

Lauren Sommer
And doing this analysis, they identified what they're calling the sperm whale phonetic Alphabet which catalogs all these variations.

Regina Barber
It's actually making me think, like, what if they're slang with the different family members? Okay. If we're using, like, the word Alphabet, that, again, makes me think of language. Like, are all these different codas different words? Are they like, parts of words? You know, like the sounds that make up an Alphabet? Right.

Lauren Sommer
And that's what's hard to figure out, because the thing that researchers say is exciting is that these codas don't seem to be random.

Daniela Rus
They can be predicted by machine learning in the same way in which you might predict the sequence of syllables or the sequence of words in a sentence.

Lauren Sommer
She's saying there could be a possibility of recombining these codas to make meaning. And that's something we do as humans in language, right. We take sounds that don't really mean anything on their own. Like, short. Right? Sh ort becomes short, and we combine it to make something that has meaning.

Regina Barber
Okay. But, like, just because you understand, like, the rhythm of the clicks doesn't mean you might understand, like, what they mean. So could scientists understand what the sperm whales mean? Like, how could they prove sperm whales are conveying complex things like language?

Lauren Sommer
Yeah, that's really hard to do. Shane says they're working on recording sperm whales and observing their behavior at the same time to kind of build up a dataset. But, you know, it's kind of hard to know if you're capturing their world and what's important to a sperm whale in that moment.

Shane Garrow
If we only ever studied north american English speaking society in the dentist's office, first of all, we'd walk away with the fact that the key part of their communication system is the word root canal.

Lauren Sommer
Right.

Shane Garrow
And we'd just be wrong because we didn't have a comprehensive picture.

Regina Barber
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point. And those are two words in a dentist office. I'm really, actually scared.

Lauren Sommer
Yes, very much so.

And it kind of just shows, like, we're used to looking at things in a very human centric way. And people have been debating this animal language question for a really long time.

It goes back, you know, 1970s researchers were teaching chimps and gorilla sign language, you might remember. Yeah. And the question was whether they were copying us or really using language the way we do. And there's a lot of other examples, like bees, you know, they do that special waggle dance in a hive. It tells other bees, like, how far are the flowers and what direction they are. And I talked to Taylor Hirsch about this. She's a researcher at the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, and she studies sperm whales.

Taylor Hirsch
Some of what they're doing may be totally different from our way of communicating, and we're probably never going to be able to fully grasp those differences.

So I think there is value in seeing if patterns in animal communication mirror patterns in human language. But I think it's important to remember that perhaps just because we don't find evidence of something doesn't mean that that system isn't complex in ways that we don't understand.

Regina Barber
Right. Like, can our human brains comprehend whatever system these sperm whales have worked out for themselves? Like, it actually makes me think of, like, arrival, that film.

Lauren Sommer
Oh, yeah.

Regina Barber
But all we really know is how our own language works. Right. And that's, I guess, where we start.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. And researchers like Shane, he agreed that looking for those similarities is valuable.

Shane Garrow
You know, when we can talk about whales and how important their grandmothers are or how important being a good neighbor is or learning from different cultures is, and the importance of cultural diversity in society, that really sort of resonates with people and can drive change in human behavior in order to sort of protect the whales.

Lauren Sommer
And, you know, sperm whales are still coming back from commercial whaling, where their numbers were just decimated. Today they face threats like ship strikes and plastics in the ocean. So Shane said it's important to appreciate what they share with us because we have such a big impact on their world.

Regina Barber
So if artificial intelligence figures out sperm whale language, what's the next step? Like, are researchers hoping to talk to them?

Lauren Sommer
Yeah, it's kind of an ethical question.

Regina Barber
Right?

Lauren Sommer
Like, do you play some sounds back to sperm whales to try to say something to them? What does that do to them? Especially if we don't really know exactly what we're saying to them.

Regina Barber
Right. Like, are we gonna scare them?

Lauren Sommer
Like.

Regina Barber
Like, I would be a little worried.

And do we want to, like, hear what they say back to us? Like, humans, they might not like us.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah. We don't have a great track record.

Right.

And, you know, everyone I talked to in reporting this, all these researchers told me they get asked a lot of what they would want to say to sperm whales.

And Taylor told me, you know, she's not, like, raring to go on this.

Taylor Hirsch
There's this implicit, like, do I have the right? What gives me the right to say anything to them?

Lauren Sommer
I mean, sperm whales have been communicating with each other a lot longer than humans have. Right. They've been doing it before humans had language, so clearly they've got it figured out on their own.

Regina Barber
Wow. Lauren, thank you so much for communicating all this to all of us. Thank you so much.

Lauren Sommer
Yeah, thanks.

Regina Barber
Before we head out, a quick shout out to our short wave plus listeners. We appreciate you and we thank you for being a subscriber. Short Wave plus helps support our show, and if you're a regular listener, we'd love for you to join so you can enjoy the show without sponsor interruptions. Find out more at plus dot npr.org shortwave.

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Lauren checked the facts. Patrick Murray and Stacey Abbott were the audio engineers. Bette Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barbour. Thanks as always for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

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Rachel Martin
On this week's episode of Wild Card, actor Chris Pine tells us it's okay not to be perfect.

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My film got absolutely decimated when it premiered, which brings up for me one of my primary triggers or whatever is like not being liked.

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