In a recent TED talk, CETI’s Pratyusha Sharma explores the communication of sperm whales and how it can help humans understand other species — and ourselves. Sharma is a graduate student at CSAIL and collaborates with advisors such as Daniela Rus to further this research.

The Way They Speak

To begin, she illustrated the idea by imagining aliens communicating with humans either through speech or writing, and emphasized that CETI's work differs from extraterrestrial exploration efforts.

“Communication is one of the core traits of intelligence,” Sharma explained. “The ability to create an unlimited number of messages by combining a limited set of sounds is what sets humans apart from other species.”

Life on Other Planets

Still, she pointed out, CETI’s findings suggest that we may not be the only ones on Earth using complex communication systems.

By exploring this, she said, we can gain insight into other species while also learning more about our own language.

She noted that millions of life forms on Earth share some form of communication.

“They operate under their own physical and mental conditions, within unique ecosystems and societies,” she said. “Yet, we know very little about their ways of communicating.”

So how do we decode them?

She went on to mention the team behind CETI, which includes experts in linguistics, biology, cryptography, and artificial intelligence. (You can find more information about the project here.)

Much of the fieldwork, she added, takes place in the Caribbean, particularly in the Dominican Republic.

A Long Timeline

Describing how sperm whales’ large brains have evolved over 16 million years, she described behaviors indicating advanced cognition:

“They coordinate dives, socialize for long periods, and even take turns caring for each other’s calves,” she said. “While navigating complete darkness, they exchange long sequences of vocalizations.”

But the big question remains: what are they trying to say?

CETI researchers have identified 21 types of “codas” — structured call patterns — with notable complexity.

“One of the key features distinguishing human language from animal communication is something called duality of patterning,” Sharma said. “It refers to how basic elements with no meaning on their own combine to form words, which then combine again to create complex meanings.”

She outlined some of the guiding principles shaping CETI’s approach to understanding whale communication.

“To reach real understanding, we must determine what aspects of their vocalizations they control,” she explained.

Visualizing Language

Showing a series of “coda visualizations,” Sharma highlighted how these seemingly simple signals reflect complex behavior.

“This has been a central mystery for scientists studying cetacean communication,” she said.

She demonstrated how CETI’s work reveals the structure within a coda:

“At first, the clicks might not sound musical, but when plotted visually like this, they resemble music,” she said, displaying a combinatorial coda system. “They vary in tempo and rhythm.”

This, she added, tells us a lot about how these animals think.

“The resulting combinations in a coda can convey up to ten times more meaning than previously thought, suggesting sperm whales are far more expressive than we believed,” she said. “Such systems are rare in nature, but not exclusive to humans. These findings could represent the first known example of this linguistic feature in another species. And this opens the door for us to apply more advanced machine learning tools to analyze the data — potentially helping us understand the meaning behind their sounds, and maybe even respond.”

The study is ongoing:

“We hope the algorithms and methods developed through this project will improve our ability to understand the many species we share the planet with,” she concluded.

This kind of research holds incredible promise — let’s see where it leads as AI continues to evolve.

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