UC Berkeley Scientists Hail Breakthrough In Decoding Whale Communication (sfgate.com) 35
UC Berkeley researchers working with Project CETI discovered that sperm whales produce vowel-like sounds embedded in their click codas, suggesting a far more complex communication system than previously understood. "It was striking just how structured the system was. I've never seen anything like that before with other animals," Begus, a UC Berkeley linguistics professor and the linguistics lead at Project CETI, told SFGATE. "We're showing the world that there's more than meets the eye in sperm whales and that, if one cares to look closely, they're not as alien. We're much more similar to each other than we used to think." SFGATE reports: With the help of a machine-learning model to identify patterns, Begus and his team combed through recordings collected from social units of sperm whales off the coast of the island of Dominica between 2005 and 2018. When they sped up the audio, removing the silences between clicks, they heard new patterns. They found acoustic properties that share similarities with two vowels -- a and i -- and several vowel combinations.
"Before, people were looking just at the timing and the number of clicks exchanged between sperm whales, but now we have to look at the frequencies, too. A whole new set of patterns have appeared," Begus said. "Now, it's one of the most complex non-human communication systems we have observed." [...] Begus said the research only shows how much more we have to learn about whales' style of communicating. He is particularly interested in exploring how the system may differ for whales between regions and how whale babies learn to communicate in this way. Most importantly, he wants to understand the meaning behind the sounds, as a "window into whale thoughts and lives." The research was published in the journal Open Mind.
"Before, people were looking just at the timing and the number of clicks exchanged between sperm whales, but now we have to look at the frequencies, too. A whole new set of patterns have appeared," Begus said. "Now, it's one of the most complex non-human communication systems we have observed." [...] Begus said the research only shows how much more we have to learn about whales' style of communicating. He is particularly interested in exploring how the system may differ for whales between regions and how whale babies learn to communicate in this way. Most importantly, he wants to understand the meaning behind the sounds, as a "window into whale thoughts and lives." The research was published in the journal Open Mind.
Still mammals (Score:2)
It's gonna be half advice on how to score easy whale pussy and the other half how to avoid overly horny whales.
Re: Still mammals (Score:2)
and constant bitching "my fucking ears, the noise from the ape's floating shells is endless" about our ships
Re: (Score:2)
Robot Chicken thought similarly...
(beached whale)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Next up : decoding Manager communication (Score:1)
That's been done; turns out it's just jibberish for dominance displays
Re:get a real job (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, why would we want to understand the world around us. It's all magical and simply is, right? Hint: understanding the world can tell us when, how, and why we are screwing it up. Whale song changes might indicate those changes. But, please, wallow in your unenlightened bubble of ignorance. What you don't know, won't hurt you, right?
Re: (Score:2)
At this point it's not a question of if we are screwing whales, it's how and how much. Between noise from shipping and sonar, fishing, whaling, general pollution, micro plastics, and climate change, we aren't doing them any favours.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone's gotta communicate with the aliens when they show up and start ionizing our atmosphere.
Re: (Score:2)
So long and thanks for all the fish?
AI (Score:5, Funny)
They found acoustic properties that share similarities with two vowels -- a and i -- and several vowel combinations.
You gotta be shitting me. The whales can't shut up about AI either?
Ask them to interface with the incoming probe (Score:2)
Admiral! There be whales here!
Missionary positions (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm sure it will be the Baptists, they specialize in going into cultures that they don't understand and insisting that theirs is the only way to live, like this moron:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
He's the 2018 winner of the Darwin Award.
https://darwinawards.com/darwi... [darwinawards.com]
There's more freaky stuff in TFA (Score:3)
Like, when they played the whale sounds backwards, they heard "turn me on, dead man" and "I bury Paul"!
"Dear YouTube" (Score:2)
"This is an official take down notice for the following websites using our songs..."
But... (Score:2)
Re: But... (Score:1)
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
What sort of idiot would attempt to understand the language of another person and not even consider that the frequency of the different sounds was important?!?
I always thought this was a hard problem, but now you're telling me, most of the people researching this are complete idiots that couldn't decipher rot13 if they tried?? Egads.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:failed to consider frequency (Score:1)
Even Dory knew that in 2003, while helping to find Nemo.
What version number is that? (Score:2)
This is Project CETI Alpha 5.0 !!
Re: (Score:2)
I never forget a face.
Gracie, isn't it?
Before the research (Score:2)
Slngndthnksfrllthfsh ...and after the research? We can finally understand!
_o _o__ a__ __a___ _o_ a__ __e _ish (Score:2)
Re:_o _o__ a__ __a___ _o_ a__ __e _ish (Score:4, Informative)
You joke, but having something definitive allows researchers to work filling in the gaps. The decipherment of Linear B was accomplished only after Alice Kober figured out the coding for 'and'. Now instead of a few big long stretches of text that you don't understand you have more pieces of smaller stretches which you can compare and contrast.
Re: (Score:1)
Cooovfeeeefeee
"excuuxssee meee" (Score:2)
What They Are Saying (Score:2)
Those whale calls are saying "D-u-u-u-u-u-de!"
You've been watching too much porn (Score:2)
When the phrase "more than meets the eye in sperm" stands out in a sentence.