Scientists discover sperm whale ‘phonetic alphabet’

Study reveals whale clicks make up building blocks of language, pointing to potential parallels with human society.

Scientists studying sperm whales have discovered that they communicate through a sort of “phonetic alphabet”, enabling them to build a rough equivalent of what humans refer to as words and phrases.

The study, published on Tuesday, involved sperm whales living around the Caribbean island of Dominica, describing how they communicate by squeezing air through their respiratory systems to make rapid clicks resembling Morse code, with sets of the noises making up the basic building blocks of language.

Research showed the “expressivity” of sperm whale calls was bigger than previously thought, said Pratyusha Sharma, a lead author of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications.

“We do not know yet what they are saying. We are studying the calls in their behavioural contexts next to understand what sperm whales might be communicating about,” she said.

Scientists have been trying for decades to understand how sperm whales communicate. The researchers, part of the Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) machine learning team, created a giant underwater recording studio with microphones at different depths to examine calls made by about 60 whales, which were tagged to ascertain if they were diving, sleeping or breathing at the surface while clicking.