Surprising discovery: Whales have their own language with human-like tones
Vietnam.vn EN
21/11/2025 00:36:00
Scientists have noted that sperm whales use codas and pitch control to maintain social connections, much like human language.
Using AI to study whale communication, researchers from Project CETI have discovered that sperm whales “talk” to each other in strange clicking patterns that resemble Morse code. Photo: Caters News Agency.
Sperm whale-like mammals combine and adjust different clicks and rhythms, called codas, to create complex, human-like calls. They use two distinct vowel-like sounds – the a-coda sound, which sounds like ‘ah’, and the i-coda sound, which sounds like ‘ee’. Photo: Caters News Agency.
According to research by experts, whales are seen actively controlling the pitch, length and type of sounds they make when they "pronounce" different words. Photo: Adobe.
Researchers from Project CETI say whales produce these sounds during social interactions in family groups, using codas to maintain connections, coordinate activities and identify each other, like an underwater social language. Photo: national-aquarium.co.uk.
The team also found that whale voices are similar to human voices because they use their lips and air sacs as sound sources and filters, just as humans use their vocal cords and vocal tracts to achieve the same result. Photo: national-aquarium.co.uk.
This is the first time researchers have discovered a non-human species using vowel-like sounds and grammar-like rules in the same way humans communicate with each other. Photo: national-aquarium.co.uk.
Scientists attached tiny suction-cup microphones called DTAGs to 15 sperm whales swimming in the Caribbean Sea to record their calls at close range without distortion. Photo: national-aquarium.co.uk.
Through this, the research team recorded that sperm whales use clicking sounds that appear in two main vowel types, A and I, just like humans use A, E, I, O and U. Timing is also a decisive factor in whale communication. Photo: marinemammalcenter.org.
By measuring pauses and pitch changes, scientists demonstrated that whales control the timing and quality of their calls deliberately rather than randomly, suggesting the existence of real communication rules. Photo: marinemammalcenter.org.
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