Scientists Find an 'Alphabet' In Whale Songs 50
Carl Zimmer reports via the New York Times: 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." In the study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers found that sperm whales communicate using sequences of clicks, called codas, that exhibit contextual and combinatorial structure. MIT News reports: The researchers identified something of a "sperm whale phonetic alphabet," where various elements that researchers call "rhythm," "tempo," "rubato," and "ornamentation" interplay to form a vast array of distinguishable codas. For example, the whales would systematically modulate certain aspects of their codas based on the conversational context, such as smoothly varying the duration of the calls -- rubato -- or adding extra ornamental clicks. But even more remarkably, they found that the basic building blocks of these codas could be combined in a combinatorial fashion, allowing the whales to construct a vast repertoire of distinct vocalizations.
[...] By developing new visualization and data analysis techniques, the CSAIL researchers found that individual sperm whales could emit various coda patterns in long exchanges, not just repeats of the same coda. These patterns, they say, are nuanced, and include fine-grained variations that other whales also produce and recognize. "One of the intriguing aspects of our research is that it parallels the hypothetical scenario of contacting alien species. It's about understanding a species with a completely different environment and communication protocols, where their interactions are distinctly different from human norms," says Pratyusha Sharma, an MIT PhD student in EECS, CSAIL affiliate, and the study's lead author. "We're exploring how to interpret the basic units of meaning in their communication. This isn't just about teaching animals a subset of human language, but decoding a naturally evolved communication system within their unique biological and environmental constraints. Essentially, our work could lay the groundwork for deciphering how an 'alien civilization' might communicate, providing insights into creating algorithms or systems to understand entirely unfamiliar forms of communication."
[...] By developing new visualization and data analysis techniques, the CSAIL researchers found that individual sperm whales could emit various coda patterns in long exchanges, not just repeats of the same coda. These patterns, they say, are nuanced, and include fine-grained variations that other whales also produce and recognize. "One of the intriguing aspects of our research is that it parallels the hypothetical scenario of contacting alien species. It's about understanding a species with a completely different environment and communication protocols, where their interactions are distinctly different from human norms," says Pratyusha Sharma, an MIT PhD student in EECS, CSAIL affiliate, and the study's lead author. "We're exploring how to interpret the basic units of meaning in their communication. This isn't just about teaching animals a subset of human language, but decoding a naturally evolved communication system within their unique biological and environmental constraints. Essentially, our work could lay the groundwork for deciphering how an 'alien civilization' might communicate, providing insights into creating algorithms or systems to understand entirely unfamiliar forms of communication."
A perfect use of AI? (Score:2)
Since whale speech is so alien, I wonder if they're applying AI models to help decipher this complex speech?
And hopefully this isn't the "Talking Ape" scam all over again.
Re:A perfect use of AI? (Score:5, Insightful)
AI is mostly good at mimicking things people already know how to do at this point. You could make an AI to mimic whale song, but it probably wouldn’t help us understand it.
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This is true. However, some basic associations with locations, and contexts in which sample codas are collected, for cross reference, might let us get some insights into "Context" for certain codas, their decorations, or the differences in tempo used based on cirumstance.
Just "we collected recordings" is insufficient.
If they collect such "possible contextual sources" as a metadata component, and use that along with the training data, the AI might be better able to spot consistent or recurring patterns in s
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Plug this into an AI model and you may get a more accurate estimate on the year.
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You could ask the navy for their data, they record pretty much every sound that occurs anywhere in the ocean.
Re: A perfect use of AI? (Score:2)
AI is an excellent tool for recognizing patterns, usually better than other techniques, which makes it a perfect technology for helping us understand whale song.
You're talking only about a narrow subset of AI called "generative AI" which uses its pattern-recognition abilities to predict something similar to what it has seen before. This is perhaps a poor technology for helping us understand whale song (but, ... it's always surprising just how many unexpected applications turn up by using it in clever ways)
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It seems Machine Learning would be more applicable to this problem than "AI" predictive algorithms, but that wouldn't sound nearly as catchy as a headline these days.
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Clusters could represent words
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This is bound to fail or at the very least fail to gather any venture capital. I didn't hear bitcoin or containers once in your proposed solution.
Re: A perfect use of AI? (Score:2)
As long as the whales and other species do not talk dirty or use offensive language
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Syntax? (Score:2)
Also, does this mean there is syntax?
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Not that they’ve found.
Re: Syntax? (Score:2)
Re:Syntax? (Score:4, Informative)
We know that whales introduce themselves with a standardised series of clicks and whistles, followed by a sequence that is unique to that whale. Other whales in the area then send a standardised sequence followed by that same unique sequence.
The order is consistent, as are the standardised sequences, and all cetaceans enter a group by this method.
This is, without any fear of doubt, indicative of a notion of protocols and that requires at least a basic distinction between nouns and not-nouns.
How much further you can go is unclear. AI can probably detect standardised constructs, but we wouldn't necessarily know what T they referred to.
I'll tell you what they're saying (Score:4, Funny)
"Hey Mike, look up: the fucking monkeys are circling overhead in their fucking boats again."
"Uh oh... Better dive deep in case they came with their spikey things again"
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"Uh oh... Better dive deep in case they came with their spikey things again"
Well, that's the thing. Humans killed millions of whales, and there is no evidence that they adapted or communicated in any way to deal with the problem.
Their "language" doesn't appear to be sophisticated or useful. It may just be mating calls.
Re:I'll tell you what they're saying (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't mean anything: humans have killed millions of humans too, and there is no evidence that humans have adapted their communication in any way to deal with the problem either.
And a lot of the sounds humans make is also about mating.
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humans have killed millions of humans too, and there is no evidence that humans have adapted their communication in any way to deal with the problem either.
An 'argot' or 'cant' is a language or creole used by various groups to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cant_(language)). These have been used by prisoner and (historically) slave populations for centuries. Does that not count as adapting communication to aid survival?
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humans have killed millions of humans too, and there is no evidence that humans have adapted their communication in any way to deal with the problem either.
Completely false. Thousands of words describe weapons, various tactics, logistics, and coordinating attacks and defenses.
Humans have been using language for conflict as long as there has been language.
Re:I'll tell you what they're saying (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not what I said. I meant that humans have never adapted their languages to deal with the problem of war. Quite the contrary, as you yourself explain.
War is humanity's disease and humans seem quite content to remain sick. And so similarly, if humanity is also the whales' biggest problem, it's conceivable that they haven't done anything about it either for some inexplicable reason, assuming they're intelligent enough to do so.
Also, assuming whales have human-level intelligence, it's quite possible that they also have human-level forgetfulness: it's possible that today's generation of whales have totally forgotten the "terror years of whaling" their forebears have lived through, and they think the danger has passed - or they're totally unaware that terrible things have happened to them at all. To my knowledge, even if whales are supremely intelligent, they don't have history books, televisions or libraries to remember what they haven't been through themselves or heard of first hand - well, first flipper I guess...
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I meant that humans have never adapted their languages to deal with the problem of war.
War's not a problem which can be addressed through language, so what you said is silly. If you forced changes in language somehow which made it less violent, people would just invent new words for violence which glorify it even more.
Also, assuming whales have human-level intelligence, it's quite possible that they also have human-level forgetfulness
So you mean they could pass down history in an oral tradition for thousands of years?
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War's not a problem which can be addressed through language,
Seriously? Have you never heard of diplomacy, negotiation? It works so well that the failures are quite notable!
So you mean they could pass down history in an oral tradition for thousands of years?
When have humans ever done that? Such long histories rely on writing. Oral history is very limited - Chinese whispers. The Maori people have a better oral history than most people who lack writing, but very little is remembered about how they travelled to NZ only 700 year ago.
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That's not what I said. I meant that humans have never adapted their languages to deal with the problem of war. Quite the contrary, as you yourself explain.
War is humanity's disease and humans seem quite content to remain sick. And so similarly, if humanity is also the whales' biggest problem, it's conceivable that they haven't done anything about it either for some inexplicable reason, assuming they're intelligent enough to do so.
Also, assuming whales have human-level intelligence, it's quite possible that they also have human-level forgetfulness: it's possible that today's generation of whales have totally forgotten the "terror years of whaling" their forebears have lived through, and they think the danger has passed - or they're totally unaware that terrible things have happened to them at all. To my knowledge, even if whales are supremely intelligent, they don't have history books, televisions or libraries to remember what they haven't been through themselves or heard of first hand - well, first flipper I guess...
War is in our nature, that is why it hasn't been 'fixed' in all the time that human beings have existed. Conflict is a universal constant on Earth, plants poison the soil around themselves to keep competitors away or grow vines to choke out others. Bacteria have all kinds of chemical weapons and defenses they use against each other. Your body has an immune system consisting of multiple overlapping methods of killing off invaders, from causing your whole body to become hot to cook them out (fever) to changin
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It's a simple, fundamental rule - that which works, works.
Aggressive life will tend to out-compete passive life. Sure, two cooperative organisms will do better than two non-cooperators, but it's a tenuous situation that fails as soon as an aggressive organism is added to the mix. Non-cooperators are not optimally efficient, but their genes are more likely to be passed on.
So... Periodic misery it is.
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I strongly disagree! War is not a "problem", it is an essential part of how we got here.
Without war, we'd never have crawled out of the primordial slime, let alone come down from the trees.
Competition and deadly conflict drives evolution, be it parasites, predators or our own species.
War was how primitive man managed population control. Was war a bad thing when the alternative was death by famine? When food is scarce do you slowly starve, kill your own children, or try your luck in battle? Competition and s
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It could be whales are far more intelligent than humans; they do have a much larger brain after all. They definitely don't use their brains like we do though, to create technology. Probably they waste their intelligence on things like remembering/predicting where food is, whether prediction as done via whale senses, and of course processing the much larger sensory input from their body, plus controlling it. Without hands, a lot of the more useful things we can do with intelligence just wouldn't be available
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humans have never adapted their languages to deal with the problem of war.
They have. It's called politics. Political language, which includes diplomacy, is intensely formal and designed to solve conflicts before they escalate into war and, when it fails and a war happens regardless, to deescalate it back into less-violent resolution of any lingering issues.
Primates without that tend to go for total wars of extermination, so the human variant has been quite successful at making things less violent, even though it has yet managed to make them completely non-violent. There hasn't be
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has yet -> hasn't yet
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Some of you guys need to lighten up.
Re:I'll tell you what they're saying (Score:4, Interesting)
Humans killed millions of whales, and there is no evidence that they adapted or communicated in any way to deal with the problem.
Are [bbc.com] you sure [livescience.com] about that [wikipedia.org]?
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Well, that's the thing. Humans killed millions of whales, and there is no evidence that they adapted or communicated in any way to deal with the problem.
Is there not?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not saying language had anything to do with it, but in this case Orcas certainly adapted to whaling by helping the monkeys do it for payment in meat.
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Re: I'll tell you what they're saying (Score:2)
Because of the global motor noise pollution, the whales sing at lower frequencies than before. That is an adaptation, but it also means that we have less chance to properly analyze and know how whales sang before our influence. The setup is already corrupted
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Analysis shows that their speech is extremely complex and definitely useful. We have already identified sequences representing personal identifiers. These are not animal grunts, they're extremely complex speech patterns that we know carry complex information.
I have no idea where you get your information from, but it's obviously not remotely accurate of from any actual researchers. It also sounds like it's a good 40-50 years out of date, at the very least.
There's actually a lot of information that they commu
Most convoluted (Score:1)
Rickroll EVER....
John C. Lilly (Score:5, Interesting)
well i would be flabbergasted ... (Score:2)
the basic building blocks of these codas could be combined in a combinatorial fashion
... if they could be combined in a non-combinatorial fashion.
Quote by Douglas Adams (Score:4, Funny)
Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah ! What’s happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of yawning, tingling sensation in my my well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ow ound round ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.
Military Submarines Have recordings to CHATBot? (Score:1)
I'm gonna sing the doom song now (Score:2)
Oh, whales write? (Score:2, Funny)
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"Hey chat
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The article seems to be talking about identifiable sub-sequences that are used to compose more complex sequences. Whether they're the equivalent of phonemes, syllables, or words is, from the looks of things unknown. But journalists have to write accessibly, which automatically means they can't write accurately.
The lead researcher... (Score:2)