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Scientists find “language” models in humpback whales – The Jerusalem Post

Scientists find “language” models in humpback whales – The Jerusalem Post

Humpback whales show structural models similar to human language, challenging long -held assumptions about the uniqueness of the human language, according to a study published on Thursday in the science of scientific journal, have revealed that science reveals that science, science,, He reveals that science reveals that science, who, science, reveals that science reveals that science reveals,

The study was led by Professor Inbal Arnon of the Jewish University of Jerusalem, Dr. Ellen Garland of St. Andrews University and Professor Simon Kirby of the University of Edinburgh. Researchers have analyzed eight years of songs on humpback whale collected in New Caledonia, using methods inspired by how human babies learn a language.

“The use of insights and methods from how babies learn the language allowed us to find an earlier undiscovered structure in the whale song,” Arnon saidS “This work shows how learning and cultural transmission can shape the structure of communication systems: we can find such a statistical structure where the complex consistent behavior is transmitted culturally.”

The team has turned the whale songs into long sequences of basic sound elements and calculates the probabilities of transition between consecutive sounds. They identified statistically agreed consequences – similar to the words of the human language – which are often found together. This approach reflects how the continuous speech of human babies in discrete words.

“Human babies get this continuous acoustic signal and they need to understand where the words are,” Arnon said, as reported by the new scientist.

Researchers have found that the frequency distribution of these consequences in whale songs is closely followed by a model known as the Law of ZIPF – a hallmark of human language. The ZIPF law suggests that the most common word in a language appears about twice as often as the second most common word, three times as often as the third, etc.

“The disclosure of this hidden linguistic-like structure in the whale song was unexpected, but it strongly suggests that this cultural behavior has a decisive view of the evolution of complex communication in the animal kingdom,” said Garland, according to Phys.org,S

While whale songs exhibit language structures, researchers emphasize that they do not transmit semantic meaning in the way it makes human language. “The whale song is not a language; it lacks semantic meaning. It can be reminiscent of human music, which also has this statistical structure, but there is no expressive meaning in the language,” Garland said.

The findings suggest that the fundamental aspects of the human language can be shared in evolutionarily distant species. Both people and humpback whales have communication systems that have been culturally learned and transmitted through generations.

“These findings provoke long -standing assumptions about the uniqueness of the human language, revealing deep communities between evolutionarily distant species,” says Professor Kirby of the University of Edinburgh. “This suggests that our understanding of the evolution of the language can benefit not only from the observation of our closest relatives of the primates, but also from cases of convergent evolution in other parts of nature.”


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The findings illustrate a deep common between two unrelated species – human and back whales – united by the fact that their communication systems are transmitted culturally.

“These results give us a unique view of the importance of cultural transmission in the learning processes between species, especially for the study of complex communication systems,” says Dr. Jenny Allen, who works with the international team.

Researchers warn that although there are structural similarities, whales songs should not be associated with the human language with regard to the transmission of meaning. Garland noted that “remains an open question” whether the open units “are relevant to the whales themselves.



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