Whale Song Resembles Human Speech

A study published in Science suggests that the intricate songs of humpback whales share structural patterns with human language, potentially making them easier for whales to learn. An international team of scientists discovered that humpback whale songs can spread rapidly from one population to another, adhering to Zipf’s Law, which states that the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its position in the frequency table. For example, in English, the most common word, “the”, is used approximately twice as frequently as the second most common word, “of”, and three times as frequently as the third most common word, “and”. Research suggests that this kind of skewed word distribution can simplify language learning.

Male humpback whales sing lengthy, elaborate songs composed of a variety of sounds strung together in repeated phrases and themes. Male whales in a specific group sing the same song. Scientists recorded eight years of humpback whale songs and categorized them into basic sound elements, including various types of squeaks, grunts, whistles, groans and moans. Subsequently, they identified subsequences of sounds that they believed resembled words. The frequency of these sequences adhered to Zipf’s Law.