Contextual and combinatorial structure in sperm whale vocalisations.

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.

Toward understanding the communication in sperm whales.

Machine learning has been advancing dramatically over the past decade. Most strides are human-based applications due to the availability of large-scale datasets; however, opportunities are ripe to apply this technology to more deeply understand non-human communication. We detail a scientific roadmap for advancing the understanding of communication of whales that can be built further upon as a template to decipher other forms of animal and non-human communication.