Shooting From The Hip - 18 - Sperm Whales: Language, ChatGPT4

With the abundance of UAP's or UFO's, it perhaps has excited the imagination of alien life. "In the next decade, consider this; the US is going to spend 100 million dollars looking for signs of non-human intelligent life in the universe ... but there is already non-human intelligent life on our planet ... it's in our seas, dolphins & whales." - James Nestor

Sperm Whales:- or cachalot (Physeter macrocephalus) - largest of the toothed whales & largest toothed predator - with a worldwide range
brain is the largest known of any modern or extinct animal, weighing on average 7.8 kg (17 lb): larger brains generally correlate with higher intelligence - live 70 years or more
average 16 metres (52 ft) length, head one-third of the length
sperm whale fossils date from Miocene period, 23 - 5 million years ago
sperm whales produce short duration sound signals called clicks. Usual clicks are produced in a 10 Hz-30 kHz frequency band - at an inter-click interval (ICI) that varies from 0.5 to 2.0 seconds during descent from the surface until the whale begins its ascent to the surface - dive 2,250 metres (7,382 ft), 3rd deepest diving mammal
sperm whales almost vocalize constantly: 75% of clicks for echolocation(biological sonar) - the remaining 25% is observed as communication
echolocation a system used by odontocetes (whales with teeth) - consist of a series of clicks produced by the animal to either find prey &/or to communicate among one another

Sperm whales are the loudest mammals on the planet, with vocalizations reaching an astonishing 230 decibels
-reference, a jet engine from 100 feet away produces about 140 decibels - around 150 decibels your eardrums will burst & the threshold for death is estimated to be in the range of 180-200

Sound travels differently underwater than it does through air, which means those 200+ decibel clicks are far more amplified than in air

“Because water is denser than air, sound in water is measured on a different decibel scale. In air, the sperm whale would still be extremely loud, but significantly less so - 174 decibels - loud enough to rupture people’s ear drums

How do they generate such powerful sound? - whales pass air through nasal passages which is subsequently forced through 2 lips called “monkey lips” at the front of its nose just below the blowhole. (The production of sound is similar to air passing through the neck of a balloon) The sound is then amplified by a fatty, wax-filled organ called the spermaceti organ that sits on top of the skull. The clicks then bounce off a portion of the skull & are directed back outward through the spermaceti organ.
Spermaceti (sperm oil) - prime target of whaling industry, sought after for: oil lamps, lubricants & candles
Sperm whaling was a major industry 19th century - is protected by the International Whaling Commission moratorium - listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature

It’s estimated that sperm whales can hear one another hundreds, perhaps even thousands of miles away using this technique.

Sperm whales are so loud that their clicks are capable of killing a human within their vicinity, says one science & adventure journalist.

James Nestor, an avid ocean-goer & author, claimed in a recent presentation that a fellow diver was swimming alongside a pod of sperm whales when one approached him out of curiosity. He put his hand up to protect himself & his hand ended up paralyzed for nearly 4 hours.

“These clicks are so powerful in the water that they can blow out your eardrums easily & they can actually vibrate a human body to death,” he said.

While normal human speech takes place between 60 & 65 decibels (dB), sperm whale clicks, described as such because we hear them as “tak-tak-tak”, can reach as high as 235dB. In contrast, a loud rock concert is around 115dB & the sound of a jet engine is roughly 140dB. Quite simply, sperm whales are the loudest animals on the planet.

Such is the power of their clicks that whales can comfortably transmit information to others from hundreds of miles away & even across vast oceans. A sound of 180dB is enough to cause drastic cell death in your ears, but the most powerful sperm whale clicks will not merely deafen you: they can vibrate the fragile human body to pieces.

Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) - interdisciplinary team of scientists have launched a project - the goal of decoding & language/communications of sperm whales - using artificial intelligence in order to understand the language

specifically, decoding the clicking sounds/echo location of sperm whales known as "codas" - typically 1 click per second - codas change at different depths & during ascent to surface & descent to depth

researchers use natural-language processing (NLP), a sub-field of AI focused on processing written & spoken language

NLP algorithm, applied to sperm whale coda recordings with promising results
Collecting Codas