The alphabet sperm whales spell out in clicks

Sperm whales do not just click. They use a rich alphabet of clicks to talk. Each short burst of clicks is called a coda. For years scientists thought these codas were simple and repetitive. A new study changes that view. Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Project CETI analyzed about nine thousand codas from sperm whales in the Caribbean. They used recording tags on the whales and machine learning to sort the clicks. The team found four features in each coda, rhythm, tempo, rubato, and ornamentation. These features combine to make 156 different codas. Whales choose codas based on the conversation. Lead author Pratyusha Sharma said the expressivity of sperm whale calls is much larger than thought. The finding challenges the idea that complex communication is unique to humans. The study appeared in Nature Communications.

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