Canadians are eyeing moves to these cities for more affordable housing
Faced with elevated housing prices, half of Canadians in the country's largest cities are considering moving to places with more affordable housing.
Scientists studying the sperm whales that live around the Caribbean island of Dominica have described for the first time the basic elements of how they might be talking to each other, in an effort that could one day help better protect them.
Like many whales and dolphins, sperm whales are highly social mammals and communicate by squeezing air through their respiratory systems to make strings of rapid clicks that can sound like an extremely loud zipper underwater. The clicks are also used as a form of echolocation to help them track their prey.
Scientists have been trying for decades to understand what those clicks might mean, with only minimal progress. While they still don't know, they now think there are sets of clicks they believe make up a “phonetic alphabet” that the whales can use to build the very rough equivalent of what people think of as words and phrases.
“We're now starting to find the first building blocks of whale language," said David Gruber, founder and president of the Cetacean Translation Initiative or CETI, an effort devoted to translating the communication of sperm whales.
In a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers analyzed more than 8,700 snippets of sperm whale clicks, known as codas. They say they have found four basic components they think make up this phonetic alphabet.
Pratyusha Sharma, the paper's lead researcher, said this alphabet could then be used by the whales in an unlimited number of combinations.
“It doesn’t appear that they have a fixed set of codas,” said Sharma, an artificial intelligence and computer science expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That gives the whales access to a much larger communication system,” she said, explaining it was as if the whales had a very large dictionary.
Sperm whales have the biggest brains of any animal on the planet at up to 20 pounds, as much as six times the size of an average human brain. Thy live in matriarchal groups of about 10 and sometimes meet up with hundreds or thousands of other whales. Sperm whales can grow up to 60 feet (18 meters) long and dive to nearly 3,280 feet (1,000 metere) to hunt for squid. They sleep vertically, in groups.
Gruber, a biology professor at the City University of New York, said sperm whales seem to have sophisticated social ties and deciphering their communication systems could reveal parallels with human language and society.
A sperm whale and her calf swim together off the coast of Dominica in March 2024. (Samuel Lam/AP News)
To get enough examples of the sperm whale clicks in Dominica, where there is a resident population of about 200 whales, scientists created a giant underwater recording studio with microphones at different depths. Tags on the whales also record what position they are in when clicking — for example diving, sleeping, breathing at the surface — and if there are any other whales nearby they might be communicating with.
Jeremy Goldbogen, an associate professor of oceans at Stanford University, called the new research “extraordinary,” saying it had “vast implications for how we understand ocean giants.”
Goldbogen, who was not involved in the study, said that if we were one day able to understand what sperm whales were saying, that knowledge should be used for conservation purposes, like minimizing their risk of being hit by ships or reducing ocean noise levels.
Sperm whales are classified as “ vulnerable ” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The whales were hunted for centuries for the oil contained in their giant heads and the species is still recovering.
Diana Reiss, a marine mammal behavior and communication expert at the City University of New York, said that scientists understand certain aspects of marine animals' communication reasonably well, including the whistles used by dolphins and the songs sung by humpback whales.
But when it comes to sperm whales, even that basic knowledge is lacking.
“What's new in this study is that they are trying to look at the basis for the whales' communication system ... not just particular calls they're making,” she said.
Reiss, who was not involved in the new research, said she hoped we would one day be able to match the whales’ clicks to behavior.
“We will never understand what the clicks mean to another whale, but we may be able to understand what the clicks mean enough to predict their behavior,” she said. “That alone would be an amazing achievement,” she said.
CETI founder Gruber said millions and possibly billions of whale codas would be needed to collect enough data to try to work out what the whales are saying, but he expects AI to help speed the analysis. He said other sperm whale populations — the whales are found in deep oceans from the Arctic to the Antarctic — likely communicate in slightly different ways.
Faced with elevated housing prices, half of Canadians in the country's largest cities are considering moving to places with more affordable housing.
Liberal parliamentarians are criticizing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre over a new video in which he promotes the idea that some Canadians are 'fleeing' Canada to live in Nicaragua because they can't afford a house in this country.
Car manufacturer Nissan has issued a do-not-drive warning for some older vehicles equipped with Takata airbag inflators, due to the risk of explosion during a crash.
A group of prominent former politicians and current academics is asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to change his tone on the possibility of arrest warrants for senior Israeli leaders.
An infant has died and three others, including another child, were taken to hospital following an ATV crash in Forties, N.S., on Monday.
Police cleared pro-Palestinian protesters from a main intersection at the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver on Wednesday.
Canadian figure-skating icon Tessa Virtue is expecting her first child, she revealed via social media Tuesday.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's housing bill has been defeated in the House of Commons with the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois voting against the legislation.
It’s a floating city exclusively home to the 1 per cent, a playground for multimillionaires and billionaires that circumnavigates the world's oceans.
The president of Covered Bridge Chips in New Brunswick is hoping to have his factory rebuilt for late 2025 following a devastating fire last year.
Students and staff at Winnipeg’s Westwood Collegiate had a unique problem to solve this month; how do you lead ducks to water from the school’s courtyard when 12 of them can’t fly yet?
Debby Lorinczy remembers her father as an amazing person and as a man who also made an amazing discovery.
Abigail Strate is a member of the Canadian national ski jumping team and an Olympic bronze medallist. She's also a certified beekeeper.
It's been a long time coming, but one Oilers superfan is hoping this will be the year he gets to touch up his massive Stanley Cup back tattoo.
A man's daring rescue of a newborn wild foal that was trapped after falling down a steep embankment was caught on video over the weekend.
A Winnipeg pinball wizard is heading to the granddaddy of them all – the IFPA World Pinball Championship.
It’s the chance of a lifetime for a group of Ottawa athletes who are getting ready to represent Team Canada at the World Junior Ultimate championships in the United Kingdom.
Parishioners at Holy Trinity Anglican Church are praying for a monetary miracle, as their historic place of worship could collapse at any moment.