{"id":21710,"date":"2025-02-06T18:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21710"},"modified":"2025-02-06T19:30:54","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:30:54","slug":"humpback-whales-sing-the-way-humans-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21710","title":{"rendered":"Humpback Whales Sing the Way Humans Speak"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The animals\u2019 complex songs share structural patterns with human language that may make them easier for whales to learn, a new study suggests.<\/p>\n

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The English language is full of wonderful words, from \u201canemone\u201d and \u201caurora\u201d to \u201czenith\u201d and \u201czodiac.\u201d<\/p>\n

But these are special occasion words, sprinkled sparingly into writing and conversation. The words in heaviest rotation are short and mundane. And they follow a remarkable statistical rule, which is universal across human languages: The most common word, which in English is \u201cthe,\u201d is used about twice as frequently as the second most common word (\u201cof,\u201d in English), three times as frequently as the third most common word (\u201cand\u201d), continuing in that pattern.<\/p>\n

Now, an international, interdisciplinary team of scientists has found<\/a> that the intricate songs of humpback whales, which can spread rapidly from one population to another, follow the same rule, which is known as Zipf\u2019s law.<\/p>\n

The scientists are careful to note that whale song is not equivalent to human language. But the findings, they argue, suggest that forms of vocal communication that are complex and culturally transmitted may have shared structural properties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe expect them to evolve to be easy to learn,\u201d said Simon Kirby, an expert on language evolution at the University of Edinburgh and an author of the new study. The results were published on Thursday in the journal Science.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think of language as this culturally evolving system that has to essentially be passed on by its hosts, which are humans,\u201d Dr. Kirby added. \u201cWhat\u2019s so gratifying for me is to see that same logic seems to also potentially apply to whale song.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The animals\u2019 complex songs share structural patterns with human language that may make them easier for whales to learn, a new study suggests.The English language is full of wonderful words, from \u201canemone\u201d and \u201caurora\u201d to \u201czenith\u201d and \u201czodiac.\u201dBut these are special occasion words, sprinkled sparingly into writing and conversation. The words in heaviest rotation are short and mundane. And they follow a remarkable statistical rule, which is universal across human languages: The most common word, which in English is \u201cthe,\u201d is used about twice as frequently as the second most common word (\u201cof,\u201d in English), three times as frequently as the third most common word (\u201cand\u201d), continuing in that pattern.Now, an international, interdisciplinary team of scientists has found that the intricate songs of humpback whales, which can spread rapidly from one population to another, follow the same rule, which is known as Zipf\u2019s law.The scientists are careful to note that whale song is not equivalent to human language. But the findings, they argue, suggest that forms of vocal communication that are complex and culturally transmitted may have shared structural properties.\u201cWe expect them to evolve to be easy to learn,\u201d said Simon Kirby, an expert on language evolution at the University of Edinburgh and an author of the new study. The results were published on Thursday in the journal Science.\u201cWe think of language as this culturally evolving system that has to essentially be passed on by its hosts, which are humans,\u201d Dr. Kirby added. \u201cWhat\u2019s so gratifying for me is to see that same logic seems to also potentially apply to whale song.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21712,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21710"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21713,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21710\/revisions\/21713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}