Biggest Brains, Loudest Voices

The human brain weighs around 3 pounds (1.3 kilos), and it makes up about 2% of our total weight. It is the most advanced and powerful computing device known to exist anywhere, and while AI and computers can do a lot of things, the human brain can still do more things better.

Compare this with the largest brain in the animal kingdom, weighing in at a hefty 17 pounds (7.8 KG).

With this big brain, you might think the sperm whale might have a really sophisticated network of sperm whale psychologists listening to other sperm whale problems. Surely these advanced creatures with their enormous brains have solved the three body problem, or at least they’re running experiments with particle accelerators down under the water.

However, since sperm whales are typically about 40 tons, this represents a minuscule fraction of their body weight—more like 0.04%. Alas, it takes a lot of brain power to run a sperm whale’s body.

However, they do have the ability to communicate across vast underwater distances, kind of the same way we might send text messages or, in a bygone era, telegraphs. They do this by producing clicks.

How do they ensure this sound gets so far? Is it by way of an electronic network? Is it a secret internet, the way fungus have? Sorry, no—that’s not how any of this works. Sperm whales don’t even have anything like card catalogs or microfilm.

What they do have is the ability to make very, very loud sounds. How loud?

Louder than a jet engine when it’s at full throttle. Louder than gunshots, thunder, and just maybe that one Motorhead show I saw in DC.

So, these big-brained creatures make the loudest sounds in the animal kingdom, and they even seem to have a sort of language. Sperm whales are capable of passing air through their nasal passage, where the forced air causes a pair of “lips” to smack together quickly.

This produces a click.

Now, the sperm whale’s head has evolved for a long time to help carry this click further. There’s an amplifier of sorts inside, and the sound can travel through air and oil-filled spaces in order make the sound louder and more precise before the click hits the water.

One reason they do this is echolocation, the same type of tool bats use to fly, or submarines use to navigate underwater. By listening to the echoes that bounce back, they can create a mental map of their surroundings and pinpoint the location of objects they want to eat, for instance.

Another reason is to stun or disorient their prey. No kidding: if you’ve got the capacity to make a 230 decibel sound, you tend to want to weaponize that ability.

As interesting as that is, it’s even more fascinating to think that these whales have evolved a sort of language centered around clicks. The clicks make up patterns called codas, and these codas seem to be an awful lot like Morse code letters.

Just like with Morse code, where individual clicks can be organized into letters, which are then organized into words, and so on; codas can make up something akin to words from the clicks, which are then organized into something like sentences.

Like with human language, the meaning of the codas might shift depending on where you are and who you’re talking to. Also like with human language, tone seems to be an additional useful bit of information that’s exchanged with clicks and codas.

These codas seem to form unique dialects that smaller groups of whales can understand and use to communicate, and we are only beginning to scratch the surface. Are we seeing a language evolve in front of our eyes?

All those underwater microphones recording clicks and codas have given scientists a lot of data to analyze. The microphones can triangulate the location of the whales, so they can see where they move and hear what they say.

Over time, we can start to understand how they communicate, and just maybe AI will help us crack into their language even deeper. If there’s ever been a benign use case for AI, surely this is it!

The ocean is deep and vast, and so are its possibilities. The way sperm whales communicate is one of those incredibly interesting things under there we are only just now beginning to understand. What other sorts of discoveries are out there for us to make? What sorts of surprises are we in for as we start to understand how other animals communicate?