by In the last ten years there has been a boom in new research into some of the most interesting sounds in the sea: the voices of whales and dolphins.
Scientists have discovered how humpback whales learn songs from neighboring communities, so that these songs travel from western Australia to South America. They found bowhead whales singing 184 different songs over a three-year period, and learned how bottlenose dolphins use signature whistles to finalize alliances.
Researchers have also shown that the vocal dialects of sperm whales are more diverse the more they come into contact with each other throughout the entire Pacific Ocean, suggesting that these dialects act as ethnic markers. Advances in technology in the form of drones, acoustic tags and recorders mean that such insights are accumulating rapidly.
Much of what whales and dolphins signal appears to be about identity within social contexts. This may include identifying members of an alliance, or members of long-term social units and clans, or a particular population or species. Vocal communication fosters and reinforces social bonds and coordinates cooperative foraging.
We have also seen a resurgence of old ideas: that behind all these fruits is hidden human language. If we can find the right tools, the thinking goes, we can decode it and start talking to whales like we talk to our neighbors.
AI is the hottest new tool. Reading some of the press around the subject, you could be forgiven for thinking that such conversations are imminent.
Two recent studies stand out for the dramatic claims they make about whale tongue. One details a backlash responding to a call replay with a similar call (but eventually losing interest).
The importance of this study was to demonstrate that such playback studies can be carried out, as the playback of animal calls and observing their reaction is a test method to discover the meanings and functions of signals.
It was not, however, the first replay to whales or dolphins, nor was it, as the scientists said, “talking” to the whale. If this was a “conversation”, we have had more insightful “conversations” with other species over the years – over 600 such playback studies have been carried out on birds.
The second study is a detailed analysis of click patterns, called codas, produced by sperm whales. It shows that the whales appear to change the speed of their codas synchronously when using them in exchanges with each other.
Such a synchronized chorus is not unique to whales. It occurs throughout the animal kingdom, from fireflies to primates. Few animal displays are as brilliantly synchronized as the four-part chorus of the white-tailed wren, and the happy wren uses pair-specific duets to express commitment to mates.
However, the sperm whale results are exciting, and fit our general understanding of the social bonding function of codas. But the scientists also tried to squeeze these speed changes into a “phonetic alphabet”, “like the International Phonetic Alphabet for human languages”, and it is this last claim that grabbed the headlines.
However, there is no evidence that sperm whales use these different tenses in anything like the complex sequences that characterize human language. We find better evidence for complex sequencing rules in Bengal finches. I wonder why we don’t see headlines about phonetic alphabets or conversations about to happen with these birds?
Don’t believe the hype
We have been intensively studying cetacean vocal behavior in the wild and in captivity for many years. Compare that to how quickly you or I can start exchanging ideas with someone we don’t share a language with – because we use our theory of mind to understand each other as communicative agents.
If there was a language, I think we would have found it by now. The most powerful language detector we know sits between our ears, and we used it to effortlessly learn our childhood language as children. As the story of Helen Keller shows, language finds a way.
Convincing the BBC not describing what happens when sperm whales “tongue” in their Blue Planet II series was the highlight of my science communication career. Why?
There is a lot of complex communication going on in whales, and we still don’t understand a lot of it. However, I am convinced that we should reduce the vague and anthropocentric focus on language. He shares other perspectives on what’s going on – for example, the relationship between rhythm-based communication and music might be a better way to understand the linked function of part synchronization in sperm whales.
We should be wary of classifying species on a single aspect relative to humans, as if all of evolution was a path to something like us (much like early anthropologists classified societies according to their progress towards western “perfection”). Instead, let’s remove ourselves from the top of the ladder and see other animals as separate branches of an evolutionary tree.
The two research groups promoting whale talk are linked to or named after the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti). Leaders of one group, Project Ceti, argue that understanding the “language” of whales will help us when we meet ET.
We’ve been here before. John Lilly also joined Seti, promoting the idea that the dolphins were alien intelligence with a complex language. Ultimately his weak evidence evaporated in a cloud of hype and hallucinations.
Unfortunately, his claims kept the important discovery of bottlenose dolphin signature whistles in the shadows for far too long, and cast a cloud of disrepute over the entire field of cetacean communication that took decades to dissipate. It would be tragic if today’s important insights were to suffer the same fate due to irresponsible claims and a narrow focus on language.
We should strive to understand and value these awesome creatures for what they are, not how they might ease our cosmic loneliness.
This article from The Conversation is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Luke Rendell does not work for, consult with, share ownership of, or be funded by any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no affiliations relevant beyond their academic appointment.
