It's thought that the effort could one day help better protect them.
It's thought that the effort could one day help better protect them.Light shines on a sperm whale swimming off the coast of Dominica in March 2024. In a study published Tuesday, May 7, in the journal Nature Communications, scientists studying the sperm whales that live around the Caribbean island have described for the first time the basic elements of how they might be talking to each other, in an effort that could one day help us to better protect them.
“We're now starting to find the first building blocks of whale language," said David Gruber, founder and president of the Cetacean Translation Initiative or CETI, an effort devoted to translating the communication of sperm whales. Sperm whales have the biggest brains of any animal on the planet at up to 20 pounds, as much as six times the size of an average human brain. Thy live in matriarchal groups of about 10 and sometimes meet up with hundreds or thousands of other whales. Sperm whales can grow up to 60 feet long and dive to nearly 3,280 feet to hunt for squid. They sleep vertically, in groups.
Jeremy Goldbogen, an associate professor of oceans at Stanford University, called the new research “extraordinary,” saying it had “vast implications for how we understand ocean giants.” Diana Reiss, a marine mammal behavior and communication expert at the City University of New York, said that scientists understand certain aspects of marine animals' communication reasonably well, including the whistles used by dolphins and the songs sung by humpback whales.“What's new in this study is that they are trying to look at the basis for the whales' communication system ... not just particular calls they're making,” she said.
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Scientists are learning the basic building blocks of sperm whale language after years of effortScientists studying the sperm whales that live around the Caribbean island of Dominica have described for the first time the basic elements of how they might be talking to each other, in an effort that could one day help better protect them.
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Scientists are learning the basic building blocks of sperm whale language after years of effortScientists studying the sperm whales that live around the Caribbean island of Dominica have described for the first time the basic elements of how they might be talking to each other, in an effort that could one day help better protect them.
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