Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.Scientists have accomplished a whale of a feat. They’ve identified previously unknown complexity in whale communication by analyzing thousands of recorded sequences of sperm whale clicks with artificial intelligence.Variations in tempo, rhythm and length of the whales’ click sequences, called codas, weave a rich acoustic tapestry. These variables hint that whales can combine click patterns in multiple ways, mixing and matching phrases to convey a broad range of information to one another.What sperm whales are saying with their clicks remains a mystery to human ears. Still, uncovering the scope of whales’ vocal exchanges is an important step toward linking whale calls to specific messages or social behaviors, the scientists reported May 7 in the journal Nature Communications.“This work builds on a lot of prior work focused on understanding the calls of sperm whales. However, this is the first work that has started to look at sperm whale calls in their wider communicative context and in the context of exchanges between whales, which has made some of the findings possible,” said study coauthor Dr. Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT, in an email.“Understanding what aspects of their codas they can control and vary helps us understand how they can encode information in their calls,” Rus said.The researchers dubbed their catalog of sound combinations a “phonetic alphabet” for sperm whales, comparing variations in the whales’ click sequences to the production of different phonetic sounds in human speech.But while the team’s findings are interesting, that term offers a misleading perspective on whales’ vocal interactions, said Dr. Luke Rendell, a researcher at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom whose work focuses on communication in marine mammals, in an email.“The presentation of the ‘phonetic alphabet’ — it’s nothing of the sort,” said Rendell, who was not involved in the research.“The way the tempo variation is used is completely different to how, say, we use elements of an alphabet to construct lingu …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnSign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.Scientists have accomplished a whale of a feat. They’ve identified previously unknown complexity in whale communication by analyzing thousands of recorded sequences of sperm whale clicks with artificial intelligence.Variations in tempo, rhythm and length of the whales’ click sequences, called codas, weave a rich acoustic tapestry. These variables hint that whales can combine click patterns in multiple ways, mixing and matching phrases to convey a broad range of information to one another.What sperm whales are saying with their clicks remains a mystery to human ears. Still, uncovering the scope of whales’ vocal exchanges is an important step toward linking whale calls to specific messages or social behaviors, the scientists reported May 7 in the journal Nature Communications.“This work builds on a lot of prior work focused on understanding the calls of sperm whales. However, this is the first work that has started to look at sperm whale calls in their wider communicative context and in the context of exchanges between whales, which has made some of the findings possible,” said study coauthor Dr. Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT, in an email.“Understanding what aspects of their codas they can control and vary helps us understand how they can encode information in their calls,” Rus said.The researchers dubbed their catalog of sound combinations a “phonetic alphabet” for sperm whales, comparing variations in the whales’ click sequences to the production of different phonetic sounds in human speech.But while the team’s findings are interesting, that term offers a misleading perspective on whales’ vocal interactions, said Dr. Luke Rendell, a researcher at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom whose work focuses on communication in marine mammals, in an email.“The presentation of the ‘phonetic alphabet’ — it’s nothing of the sort,” said Rendell, who was not involved in the research.“The way the tempo variation is used is completely different to how, say, we use elements of an alphabet to construct lingu …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
