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Starting next week, submitting Obituaries, In Memoriams or Cards of Thanks for our publications and online becomes easier! Simply visit - The various species of whales inhabiting Earth's oceans employ different types of vocalizations to communicate. Sperm whales, the largest of the toothed whales, communicate using bursts of clicking noises - called codas - sounding a bit like Morse code.
"We do not know yet what they are saying. We are studying the calls in their behavioral contexts next to understand what sperm whales might be communicating about," said Sharma. "Why are they exchanging these codas? What information might they be sharing?" asked study co-author Shane Gero, Project CETI's lead biologist and Dominica Sperm Whale Project founder, also affiliated with Carleton University in Canada.
"All of these different codas that we see are actually built by combining a comparatively simple set of smaller pieces," said study co-author Jacob Andreas, an MIT computer science professor and Project CETI member. Sperm whales, Sharma said, also use a two-level combination of features to form codas, and codas are then sequenced together as the whales communicate. The lower level has similarities to letters in an alphabet, Sharma said.
"Human language is unique in many ways, yes," Gero said."But I suspect we will find many patterns, structures and aspects thought to be unique to humans in other species, including whales, as science progresses - and perhaps also features and aspects of animal communications which humans do not possess."
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