MISRYOUM newsroom reported on a study suggesting sperm whale communication may be closer to human language than anyone expected. We share a common ancestor with these ocean giants more than 90 million years ago, sure—but “shared” is about evolution, not vocabulary.
What researchers found is that sperm whales use short clicks in sequences called codas, and those codas carry vowel-like elements. The study describes something like an “alphabet,” where vowels can be expressed through patterns in the clicks—short versus elongated sounds, or rising versus falling tones. Somehow, the structure of these vowel behaviors lines up with how human speech organizes sound, not just at the surface level, but deeper in phonetics and phonology.
The paper, published in the Proceedings B journal, says the whales’ vocal system has “close parallels in the phonetics and phonology of human languages, suggesting independent evolution”. It also calls the sperm whale coda vocalizations “highly complex and represent one of the closest parallels to human phonology of any analyzed animal communication system”. That last phrase is doing a lot of work, and Misryoum editorial desk noted it with good reason—because it’s a strong claim in a field where caution is usually the default.
These results are also the latest development from Project Ceti (standing for Cetacean Translation Initiative), which has focused on sperm whales off the coast of Dominica. Misryoum analysis indicates the group has been using modern tools, including artificial intelligence, to sift through whale audio in an effort to understand what the animals are doing when they “talk”. Last month, the project released video of a sperm whale giving birth while other whales supported it—one of those moments that makes the science feel less abstract, even if the recordings themselves are just sound.
There’s a practical reason sperm whale “conversation” is hard to study. The animals dive deep underwater to hunt squid, sometimes for up to 50 minutes, then surface for only about 10 minutes. During that brief window near the surface, they appear to do a lot of close-range clicking—something Project Ceti’s founder and president, David Gruber, described as the whales getting their heads close together. He compared it to talking across a football stadium versus leaning in so you can have a “real sophisticated conversation.” It’s not every day that you hear a linguist’s comparison paired with the unmistakable sensory detail of being out on the water—just the slap of waves against the hull, and the quiet before the next burst of clicks.
Even with all that, the similarities are striking because the click patterns, at first listen, might sound like a staccato code. But Misryoum newsroom reported that once researchers removed the gaps between clicks, they could detect structured patterns that resemble human vowel manipulation—again, not in meaning (we don’t have that), but in the mechanics of turning one sound category into another. The study’s lead author, linguist Gašper Beguš, said this level of complexity in sperm whale speech went beyond anything he had seen in other animals such as parrots and elephants, while still emphasizing how different the whales’ lives are from ours.
The bigger question is whether these insights can lead to actual comprehension. Project Ceti has a goal of understanding 20 different vocalized expressions related to actions like diving and sleeping within the next five years. Gruber cautioned that fully grasping what the whales are saying—or being able to converse with them—remains a longer-term proposition, but not an impossible one. “We’re like a two-year-old,” he said in an analogy that basically sums up the current stage: a few words, a lot of listening, and then maybe—eventually—something closer to real back-and-forth. And for now, the idea that sperm whales might pass information along generation to generation for over 20 million years feels both humbling and… honestly, a little unsettling. In a good way.
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