Whale song shows language-like statistical structure

2025/02/06 by Inbal Arnon, Simon Kirby, Jenny Allen +3 · 1 voice · 41 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior #Biology #Communication #Computer science #Cultural transmission in animals #Ecology #Evolutionary biology #History #Human language #Humpback whale #Language acquisition #Language and cultural evolution #Linguistics #Marine animal studies overview #Philosophy #Psychology #Telecommunications #Transmission (telecommunications) #Whale

paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.adq7055

published in Science 387(6734), 649-653 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)

openalex publication_date 2025/02/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

Humpback whale song is a culturally transmitted behavior. Human language, which is also culturally transmitted, has statistically coherent parts whose frequency distribution follows a power law. These properties facilitate learning and may therefore arise because of their contribution to the faithful transmission of language over multiple cultural generations. If so, we would expect to find them in other culturally transmitted systems. In this study, we applied methods based on infant speech segmentation to 8 years of humpback recordings, uncovering in whale song the same statistical structure that is a hallmark of human language. This commonality, in two evolutionarily distant species, points to the role of learning and cultural transmission in the emergence of properties thought to be unique to human language.

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Discussions

• A thread explaining our new discovery about humpback whale song published today in Science... We found key statistical properties that characterise all human languages in another species for the first [bsky, 836 points, 24 comments]

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