The way sperm whales communicate is closer to human language than we realized

Amazing stuff! What are these whales talking about?

"Sperm whales are fascinating creatures. They possess the biggest brain of any species, six times larger than a human’s, which scientists believe may have evolved to support intelligent, rational behavior. They’re highly social, capable of making decisions as a group, and they exhibit complex foraging behavior.  

But there’s also a lot we don’t know about them, including what they may be trying to say to one another when they communicate using a system of short bursts of clicks, known as codas. Now, new research published in Nature Communications today suggests that sperm whales’ communication is actually much more expressive and complicated than was previously thought. ..."

From the abstract:

"Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) are highly social mammals that communicate using sequences of clicks called codas. While a subset of codas have been shown to encode information about caller identity, almost everything else about the sperm whale communication system, including its structure and information-carrying capacity, remains unknown. We show that codas exhibit contextual and combinatorial structure. First, we report previously undescribed features of codas that are sensitive to the conversational context in which they occur, and systematically controlled and imitated across whales. We call these rubato and ornamentation. Second, we show that codas form a combinatorial coding system in which rubato and ornamentation combine with two context-independent features we call rhythm and tempo to produce a large inventory of distinguishable codas. Sperm whale vocalisations are more expressive and structured than previously believed, and built from a repertoire comprising nearly an order of magnitude more distinguishable codas. These results show context-sensitive and combinatorial vocalisation can appear in organisms with divergent evolutionary lineage and vocal apparatus."

The way whales communicate is closer to human language than we realized | MIT Technology Review A wave of new projects are taking us closer to understanding what whales are communicating to each other

Contextual and combinatorial structure in sperm whale vocalisations (open access)

Fig. 1: Exchange plot.

Fig. 3: Sperm whale phonetic alphabet.

Birds sing in their sleep – and now we can synthesize their songs

Amazing stuff!

I wish I could sing while I sleep (my wake time singing is probably not great). Maybe a star would be born overnight! (just kidding) What would be the lyrics: "I'm singing in my sleep/Just singin' in my sleep/What a glorious feeling/I'm happy again/I'm laughing at clouds/So dark up above/ The sun's in my heart/And I'm ready for love" (My adaptation of Singin in the rain!) 😊

"Researchers have tracked muscle contractions in a bird's vocal tract, and reconstructed the song it was silently singing in its sleep. The resulting audio is a very specific call, allowing the team to figure out what the bird's dream was about. ...
When birds sleep, the part of their brains dedicated to daytime singing remains active, showing patterns that resemble those produced while awake. ...
Custom-made electromyography (EMG) electrodes were implanted in the birds [where are the animal rights activists when you need them?] to measure the muscle response and electrical activity in the obliquus ventralis muscle, the most prominent muscle producing the kiskadee’s birdsong. EMG and birdsong audio were recorded simultaneously while the birds were awake and asleep. An existing dynamical systems model of the kiskadee’s sound production mechanism was used to translate the information into synthetic songs. ...
Analyzing muscular activity during sleep revealed consistent activity patterns corresponding to the trills produced by kiskadees during daytime territorial fights. Interestingly, the ‘dreaming trills’ were associated with raised head feathers, the same as during the daytime. ..."

"... Many bird species have complex musculature, so translating syringeal activity into song is a bit of a challenge. ..."

From the abstract:

"During sleep, sporadically, it is possible to find neural patterns of activity in areas of the avian brain that are activated during the generation of the song. It has recently been found that in the vocal muscles of a sleeping bird, it is possible to detect activity patterns during these silent replays. In this work, we employ a dynamical systems model for song production in suboscine birds in order to translate the vocal muscles activity during sleep into synthetic songs. Besides allowing us to translate muscle activity into behavior, we argue that this approach poses the biomechanics as a unique window into the avian brain, with biophysical models as its probe."

Birds sing in their sleep – and now we can decipher their dreams

What Do Bird Dreams Sound Like? (original news release) Researchers translate vocal muscle activity of birds during sleep into synthetic songs.

Synthesizing avian dreams (no public access)

Vocal muscle activity of birds during sleep can be translated into synthetic songs

This Australian duck says 'You bloody fool' and can imitate other sounds

Amazing stuff! This almost certainly gives Walt Disney's Donald Duck a whole new meaning. What did Walt know about ducks that we did not? 😄

"... found more evidence that musk ducks (Biziura lobata) can mimic sounds from nature, as well as those made by humans. ... Vocal learning refers to imitating sounds or producing completely new vocalizations, depending on the species involved. Central to this ability seems to be auditory feedback during development. ..."

From the abstract:

"Acquiring vocalizations by learning them from other individuals is only known from a limited number of animal groups. For birds, oscine and some suboscine songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds demonstrate this ability. Here, we provide evidence for vocal learning in a member of a basal clade of the avian phylogeny: the Australian musk duck (Biziura lobata). A hand-reared individual imitated a slamming door and a human voice, and a female-reared individual imitated Pacific black duck quacks. These sounds have been described before, but were never analysed in any detail and went so far unnoticed by researchers of vocal learning. The imitations were produced during the males' advertising display. The hand-reared male used at least three different vocalizations in the display context, with each one produced in the same stereotyped and repetitive structure as the normal display sounds. Sounds of different origins could be combined in one vocalization and at least some of the imitations were memorized at an early age, well before they were produced later in life. Together with earlier observations of vocal differences between populations and deviant vocalizations in captive-reared individuals, these observations demonstrate the presence of advanced vocal learning at a level comparable to that of songbirds and parrots. ..."

This Australian duck says 'You bloody fool' and can imitate other sounds -- and scientists couldn't be more fascinated This rare display of acquired vocalization could help scientists unravel the origin of speech and language in humans.

Vocal imitations and production learning by Australian musk ducks (Biziura lobata) (open access)

Donald Duck as he first appeared in The Wise Little Hen (1934)