Whales, like other species, use a variety of sounds to communicate with others and to express their feelings. Interestingly, different species of whales use different languages to communicate! Although it may sound strange, the language used by sperm whales has coded alphabets!

Researchers have claimed that sperm whales communicate among themselves through sounds, similar to the shutter sound or clicks of a camera. Researchers have named this sound coda. In other words, a sperm whale coda is a short burst of rapid clicks that they use to communicate. Coda sequences are unique to each social group and can indicate the whale culture. This particular sound, produced by the sperm whales, sounds a bit like morse code. They use specific letters to express their emotions, much like human beings. Biologists are trying to understand the structure of those letters with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Pratyusha Sharma, a PhD student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is a member of the team of researchers who are analysing the language of sperm whales. Sharma has expressed hope that the AI would help them to decode the language of aquatic species, including sperm whales, in near future. She has explained that sperm whales have a special type of voice box or sound-producing organ in their bodies. It helps whales to produce music-like sounds beneath the water and to communicate with their mates. Marine mammals rely heavily on the sound because of the limited functionality of their other organs in the water.

The brain of sperm whales is the largest, five times larger than the human brain. They usually live in groups and each group can have up to 10 sperm whales. The 18mt-long sperm whales love to sleep in groups at sea. In a 1971 article published in Science magazine, Dr Roger Payne, the Chief Adviser of the Cetacean Translation Initiative, claimed that “whales sing to one another“. His recordings, Songs of the Humpback Whale, sparked the Save the Whales movement, one of the most successful conservation initiatives in history. Sharma told The Telegraph that the language of sperm whales is quite complex and rhythmic. This is how sperm whales create a complex language.

According to researchers, the wavelength of sounds produced by sperm whales is quite short. Hence, researchers have used digital acoustic recording tags to record the sounds by placing the device in the body of a whale temporarily. The device also captures the behaviour of whales underwater. Researchers further use microphones, accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers in order to record the sounds produced by whales and to track their movements. Meanwhile, sensors are used to determine the exact location of whales under the sea.

Sperm whales communicate among themselves through various codas. Interestingly, the coda used for coordination does not match with the coda used for self-identification! Again, members of a group use a completely different coda, called echolocation, while hunting. Previously, researchers thought that sperm whales used only 21 types of codas. Now, they have identified 156 types of codas after studying nearly 9,000 recordings!

AI has also helped researchers to study the languages of different animals. In 2016, researchers used machine learning to identify differences between sounds produced by the Egyptian fruit bats (or Megachiroptera) while fighting over food and fighting over a resting place. Scientists have followed a similar approach to deciphering the secrets of whale codas. Machine learning has created a sequence model that is able to capture subtle differences in whale codas and associated behaviours.

The main abstract of this study has recently been published in Nature Communications journal. Researchers have claimed to have found four basic elements in the language of sperm whales after analysing more than 8,700 codas. According to Sharma, sounds produced by sperm whales create phonetic alphabets. She has explained that whales can combine countless codas to use those alphabets, just as human beings combine letters to form words and words to form sentences!

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das