The songs of humpback whales exhibit structural patterns similar to human language, challenging long-held assumptions about the uniqueness of human language, according to a study published on Thursday in the scientific journal Science revealed that
The study was led by Professor Inbal Arnon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Ellen Garland of the University of St Andrews, and Professor Simon Kirby of the University of Edinburgh. The researchers analyzed eight years of humpback whale song data collected in New Caledonia, using methods inspired by how human infants learn language.
"Using insights and methods from how babies learn language allowed us to discover previously undetected structure in whale song," said Arnon. "This work shows how learning and cultural transmission can shape the structure of communication systems: we may find similar statistical structure wherever complex sequential behavior is transmitted culturally."
The team transformed the whale songs into long sequences of basic sound elements and calculated the transition probabilities between consecutive sounds. They identified statistically coherent subsequences—similar to words in human language—that frequently occurred together. This approach mirrors how human infants segment continuous speech into discrete words.
"Human infants get this continuous acoustic signal, and they have to figure out where the words are," said Arnon, as reported by New Scientist.
The researchers found that the frequency distribution of these subsequences in whale songs closely followed a pattern known as Zipf's law—a hallmark of human language. Zipf's law suggests that the most frequent word in a language appears about twice as often as the second most frequent word, three times as often as the third, and so on.
"Revealing this hidden language-like structure in whale song was unexpected, but it strongly suggests this cultural behavior holds crucial insight into the evolution of complex communication across the animal kingdom," said Garland, according to Phys.org.
While the whale songs exhibit language-like structures, the researchers emphasize that they do not convey semantic meaning in the way human language does. "Whale song is not a language; it lacks semantic meaning. It may be more reminiscent of human music, which also has this statistical structure, but lacks the expressive meaning found in language," said Garland.
The findings suggest that foundational aspects of human language may be shared across evolutionarily distant species. Both humans and humpback whales possess communication systems that are culturally learned and transmitted across generations.
"These findings challenge long-held assumptions about the uniqueness of human language, uncovering deep commonalities between evolutionarily distant species," said Professor Kirby from the University of Edinburgh. "It suggests that our understanding of the evolution of language may benefit not only from observing our closest primate relatives but also from cases of convergent evolution in other parts of nature."
The findings illustrate a deep commonality between two unrelated species—humans and humpback whales—united by the fact that their communication systems are culturally transmitted.
"These results give us unique insight into the importance of cultural transmission in learning processes across species, particularly for learning complex systems of communication," said Dr. Jenny Allen, who worked with the international team.
The researchers caution that, while structural similarities exist, whale songs should not be conflated with human language in terms of conveying meaning. Garland noted that "it remains an open question" whether the detected units "are relevant to the whales themselves."