Sperm whales’ communication closely parallels human language, study finds研究发现抹香鲸的交流与人类语言高度相似
Analysis shows whales’ coda vocalizations are ‘highly complex’ and remarkably similar to our own
We may appear to have little in common with sperm whales – enormous, ocean-dwelling animals that last shared a common ancestor with humans more than 90 million years ago. But the whales’ vocalized communications are remarkably similar to our own, researchers have discovered.我们似乎与抹香鲸几乎没有共同点——这些巨大的海洋生物，最后一次与人类共享共同祖先是在九千多万年前。但研究人员发现，鲸鱼的叫声与我们非常相似。
Not only do sperm whale have a form of “alphabet” and form vowels within their vocalizations but the structure of these vowels behaves in the same way as human speech, the new study has found.
这项新研究发现，抹香鲸不仅拥有一种“ 字母表 ”，并在发声中形成元音，这些元音的结构也与人类语言的行为相似。
Sperm whales communicate in a series of short clicks called codas. Analysis of these clicks shows that the whales can differentiate vowels through the short or elongated clicks or through rising or falling tones, using patterns similar to languages such as Mandarin, Latin and Slovenian.
抹香鲸通过一系列称为尾声的短点击进行交流。对这些点击声的分析显示，鲸鱼可以通过短音或拉长的点击声，或通过上升或下降声调区分元音，这种模式类似于普通话、拉丁语和斯洛文尼亚语等语言。
The structure of the whales’ communication has “close parallels in the phonetics and phonology of human languages, suggesting independent evolution”, the paper, published in the Proceedings B journal, states. Sperm whale coda vocalizations are “highly complex and represent one of the closest parallels to human phonology of any analyzed animal communication system”, it added.
该论文发表在 《Proceedings B》期刊中指出，鲸鱼的交流结构“在人类语言的语音和语音学上有密切相似之处，暗示了独立进化”。报告补充说，抹香鲸尾声“极其复杂，是所有分析过的动物交流系统中最接近人类语音的类比”。
The findings are the latest discovery about the lives of sperm whales by Project Ceti (standing for Cetacean Translation Initiative), an organization that has studied whales off the coast of Dominica in an attempt to find out what they are saying. Last month, the project released video of a sperm whale giving birth while other whales supported it.
这些发现是“Project Ceti”（鲸类翻译倡议）关于抹香鲸生活的最新发现，该组织曾在多米尼加海岸研究鲸鱼，试图弄清它们在说什么 。上个月，该项目发布了一只抹香鲸分娩的视频 ，其他鲸鱼也给予了支持。
How sperm whale communication is similar to human language – video
抹香鲸的交流如何与人类语言相似——视频
Until the 1950s, it was not clear to scientists that sperm whales even vocalized but modern technology, including artificial intelligence, is helping unlock the language of these creatures – with unexpected similarities to our own speech
直到20世纪50年代，科学家们还不清楚抹香鲸是否会发出声音，但现代技术，包括人工智能，正在帮助解锁这些生物的语言——而且与我们的语言有着意想不到的相似之处。
“I think it’s another humbling moment that we’re not the only species with rich, communicative, communal and cultural lives,” said David Gruber, founder and president of Project CETI.
我认为，我们并不是唯一拥有丰富、沟通、社区和文化生活的物种，”Project CETI 创始人兼主席 David Gruber 说：“我认为这又是一个令人谦卑的时刻。”
“These whales could be passing information along generation to generation to generation for over 20 million years. Humans now are just having the right tools and desire to be able to look at whale voices in this way to see the complexity that has been there all along.”
“这些鲸鱼可能在两千万年里一代代传递信息。人类现在只是拥有合适的工具和渴望，能够以这种方式观察鲸鱼的声音，从而看到一直存在的复杂性。”
Studying sperm whales can be challenging – they dive deep underwater for up to 50 minutes in search of squid to eat, only surfacing for 10 minutes at a time. But it’s near the surface where the animals “chit-chat”, as Gruber put it, with their heads close together.研究抹香鲸可能具有挑战性——它们会潜入深水长达50分钟寻找鱿鱼，每次只浮出水面10分钟。但正如格鲁伯所说，动物们“闲聊”的地方靠近水面，头靠得很近。
“If you watch sperm whales, they put their heads right together and click into each other’s heads,” he said. “It’s like if you wanted to talk to someone about a Chaucer novel or something – you wouldn’t want to do that from opposite ends of a football stadium. You would want to get real close to have a real sophisticated conversation.”
“如果你观察抹香鲸，它们会把头贴在一起，互相点击，”他说。“这就像你想和别人聊乔叟的小说什么的——你不会想从足球场的两端说。你得靠得很近才能进行真正的高深对话。”
That sperm whale conversation sounds, to our ears, little more than a staccato morse code. But by removing the gaps between the clicks, researchers were able to find patterns strikingly similar to human speech. Much like how we alter our vocal folds to change an “A” sound into an “E” sound, whales can manipulate vowel sounds into different meanings.
那句抹香鲸的对话，在我们耳中听起来不过是断断续续的摩斯电码。但通过消除点击之间的间隙，研究人员发现了与人类语音极为相似的模式。就像我们改变声带将“A”音变成“E”音一样，鲸鱼也能操控元音音产生不同的含义。
Gašper Beguš, a linguist at University of California, Berkeley who led the new paper, said that this level of complexity in sperm whale speech was beyond anything he had studied in other creatures, such as parrots and elephants, and highlights the parallels between our lives and those of the whales.
加州大学伯克利分校语言学家加什珀·贝古什（Gašper Beguš）领导了这篇新论文，他表示抹香鲸语言的复杂程度超越了他在鹦鹉和大象等其他生物中研究过的任何情况，并强调了我们生活与鲸鱼生活的相似之处。
“They have very different lives to us – they’re not stuck to the ground all the time, they float in the water, they sleep vertically,” said Beguš.
贝古什说：“它们的生活和我们非常不同——它们不会一直粘在地上，而是漂浮在水中，垂直睡觉。”
“Yet you realize that there’s a lot that unifies us. They have grandmas, they babysit each other’s calves, they give collaborative births, they’re very loud during a birth and so on. It’s such a distant intelligence, but in many ways very relatable.”
“但你也明白，有很多东西让我们团结在一起。他们有奶奶，互相照看小腿，合作分娩，分娩时声音很大，等等。这是一种遥远的智慧，但在很多方面非常能引起共鸣。”
The new study shows that “sperm whale communication isn’t just about patterns of clicks – it involves multiple interacting layers of structure,” said Mauricio Cantor, a behavioral ecologist at the Marine Mammal Institute who was not involved in the research. “With this study, we’re starting to see that these signals are organized in ways we didn’t fully appreciate before.”
新研究显示，“抹香鲸的交流不仅仅是点击的模式——它还涉及多层结构的相互作用，”海洋哺乳动物研究所的行为生态学家毛里西奥·坎托尔说，他未参与该研究。“通过这项研究，我们开始看到这些信号的组织方式是我们以前未曾完全理解的。”
The latest discovery around sperm whale speech has inched forward the possibility of someday fully understanding the creatures and even communicating with them. Project Ceti has set a goal of being able to comprehend 20 different vocalized expressions, relating to actions such as diving and sleeping, within the next five years.
关于抹香鲸语言的最新发现，让未来能够完全理解这些生物，甚至与它们交流的可能性逐渐前进。Project Ceti 设定了一个目标，在未来五年内能够理解 20 种不同的声音表达，这些表达与潜水和睡眠等动作相关。
Actually being able to fully grasp what the whales are saying, or being able to converse with them, is still a longer-term proposition, Gruber said, but not an outlandish one.
格鲁伯说，真正能完全理解鲸鱼在说什么，或者能与它们交流，仍然是个长期的目标，但并不荒谬。
“It’s totally within our grasp,” he said. “We’ve already got a lot further than I thought we could. But it will take time, and funding. At the moment we are like a two-year-old, just saying a few words. In a few years’ time, maybe we will be more like a five-year-old.”
“这完全触手可及，”他说。“我们已经走得比我想象的远了。但这需要时间和资金支持。现在我们就像一个两岁小孩，只是说几句话。几年后，也许我们会更像个五岁的孩子。”
