Animal Alphabets

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have scientists discovered an alphabet in whale calls? As researchers try to decipher the series of clicks made by sperm whales, we ask whether these cetaceans might have language, and if it follows that whales are thinking animals too. Could we one day get a peek into the thoughts of a humpback whale? Meanwhile, somewhere along the long path of evolution, one species emerged with an impressive gift for gab. Are speech and language unique human superpowers? Guests: Carl Zimmer – Columnist, The New York Times, including the article, “Scientists Find an ‘Alphabet’ in Whale Songs”. Ev Fedorenko – Cognitive neuroscientist, director of the EV Lab, MIT Tecumseh Fitch – Evolutionary biologist at the University of Vienna Descripción en español Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Originally aired July 29, 2024 You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
0:04.2	I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Safeguarding Sound Science, Evolution Edition.
0:09.6	Evolution is the unifying principle of biology, yet it still breeds controversy a century
0:15.3	and a half after Charles Darwin.
0:17.7	Join us as we meet the passionate researchers and communicators who are expanding our knowledge
0:23.0	and fighting to keep good science in our schools and politics. Subscribe to Safeguarding Sound
0:29.3	Science on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you like to listen. This is what scientists heard when they placed an underwater microphone off the coast of Bermuda in the late 1960s. M. M. as haunting and, frankly, beautiful, as humpback whale calls,
1:05.0	and scientists have tried to decode the meaning of these calls ever since they were first heard.
1:10.0	What are the animals saying to each other, and what do these strange vocalizations say about
1:14.7	their cognitive abilities and how they perceive the world? Well, scientists have recently begun
1:19.8	to crack the communication code of a different whale species.
1:26.2	Scientists think that these sounds include the alphabet of the sperm whale.
1:30.4	Could whales be communicating in a complex language? And if we could decipher what they're saying,
1:35.7	could we one day learn what they're thinking? I'm Seth Shostak, and this is big-picture science
1:41.1	from the SETI Institute. I'm Molly Bentley, and in this episode,
1:44.7	what, if anything, separates human language
1:47.0	from the communication of other animals
1:49.0	and the importance of finding that, in the oceans at least,
1:53.0	there might be animal alphabets?
1:56.3	A, B, C, D, F, G.
2:00.2	If you speak just about any language, English, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi or German,
2:05.6	to just name a few, you learned the alphabet at a young age.
	...

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