One of humankind’s perennial yearnings is the alluring notion that we could one day talk to other species on the planet.
What would happen if we could understand what animals are saying to each other?
A team of international researchers are starting with the largest-toothed predator on Earth: The sperm whale.
They’ve put together Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) – a transdisciplinary research initiative connecting technologists, roboticists, cryptographers, linguists and marine scientists – to study whale communication.
The five-year odyssey is said to be the largest ‘interspecies communication’ project ever.
Super loud communicators.
Sperm whales ‘speak’ in a symphony of patterned clicks, also known as codas. They’re also the loudest animals on the planet, with clicks as loud as 236 decibels. That’s much louder than a jet engine at takeoff!
These clicks are so powerful in the water that they can easily blow out your eardrums, and believe it or not…they can even vibrate the human body to death!
Some researchers believe that they can keep in contact with one another through these clicks at hundreds and even thousands of kilometres away – even when they are on other sides of the planet!
Shhh… Let’s eavesdrop on some sperm whale chatter here!
The CETI team chose to study sperm whales as they share traits strikingly alike to humans. They have higher-level functions such as consciousness and future planning, as well as feelings of compassion, love, suffering and intuition. More importantly, their vocalisations, which even have dialects, possess a Morse code-like structure that depicts the hallmarks of a highly-evolved language.
Technology innovation enables research in animal communication.
Animal communication discoveries, increasingly assisted by Artificial Intelligence (AI), have allowed us to learn a lot about the unique ways animals communicate. Prairie dogs alter their calls depending on who or what is approaching them. Vervet monkeys make different alarm sounds for different dangers and predators. Machine learning (ML) has enabled researchers to decode bat and rodent communication and link the sounds to different behaviours, such as escaping danger or trying to woo a mate.
With the advent of sophisticated algorithms and high-performance computing, which accelerated breakthroughs in AI and ML in the last decade, scientists are now more equipped than ever before to decipher animal communication.
In their paper, the CETI team outlines a plan to decrypt sperm whale vocalisations. They’ll first have to collect recordings of sperm whales through creative channels and techniques. The researchers will deploy underwater microphones in whale hot spots, use drones to lower microphones close to whales congregating at the ocean surface, and release robotic fish to stalk and listen to whales from a distance.
Next, they will train ML models using algorithms built on oceans of data from these recordings – at least a whopping 4 billion of them. The models will then be utilised to decode the sequences of clicks the whales use to communicate.
Understanding whales can help advance humanity.
Potential implications from Project CETI can be groundbreaking.
Linguists argue that what constitutes ‘language’ is a communication system, something that highly intelligent non-human animals lack.
Could sperm whales, which also lead complex social lives like us, pose an exception?
Experts say the project, if successful, could revolutionise how we study the communication systems of other animals. Some even suggest that it might yield useful frameworks to converse with extraterrestrial life.
The CETI researchers also noted that much of the value of the project lies in the journey of discovery itself. While the Apollo program put us on the moon, humans invented a myriad of electronics along the way, all of which launched the digital age that makes Project CETI possible. Even if they are unable to crack the whale code, the scientists are bound to advance AI and ML in animal communication research, as well as our understanding of the aliens of the deep.
So, let’s imagine that it’s finally possible to speak to them. What would you like to say to the largest mammal on Earth?
