Researchers have uncovered the communication structure of cachalots or sperm whales with the help of artificial intelligence.
According to BBC, sperm whales live in the inky zone of the ocean and spend most of their lives hunting in the deep sea beyond the reach of sunlight. They can dive over 3 km (10,000 ft) and hold their breath for two hours.
Kirsten Young, a marine scientist, said, “At 1000 m (3300 ft) deep, many of the group will be facing the same way, flanking each other, but across an area of several kilometers. During this time they're talking, clicking the whole time."
She added that they rise to the surface in synchrony after an hour. During this rest at the surface, they rub against each other, chat, and socialise, and “then have their rest phase. They might be at the surface for 15 to 20 minutes. Then they'll dive again... As researchers, we don't see a lot of their behaviour because they don't spend that much time at the surface.”
Moreover, David Gruber, lead and founder of the Cetacean Translation Initiative (Ceti), said that as mammals we share some basic actions, which is why it was easier to translate the part where they were sleeping, eating, or nursing, but the decoding became interesting while studying the part of their lives that was different from human life.
Ceti researchers like modern-day animal communication studies used AI technology to decode a "sperm whale phonetic alphabet."
The largest-toothed whales communicate with each other in a rhythmic sequence of clicks called codas.
Earlier it was thought that whales have 21 coda types, but after recent observations and studying almost 9,000 recordings, it was revealed that there are 56 different codas, and these “sperm whale phonetic alphabets" are similar to phonemes, the units of sound in human language that combine to form words.
