Scientists fed decades of sperm whale clicks into an AI built to decode their communication, and the first translated message stopped researchers cold. The system identified repeating patterns in the whales’ codas, the rhythmic click sequences they use to talk.
In 2024, an MIT research team analyzed 9,000 recordings of sperm whale vocalizations using an artificial intelligence system originally designed for code-breaking. The analysis identified 156 distinct click patterns, known as codas, that the whales use to communicate. This was a significant increase from the 21 codas that researchers had previously cataloged since the 1970s.The findings emerged fr…