Animal Communication Science
Investigating the structural complexity, social functions, and acoustic repertoires of cetaceans and other vocal species.
Dolphin Communication Systems
Signature whistles encode individual identity; burst-pulse packets correlate with agonistic and affiliative behavior; echolocation click trains probe surrounding hydrodynamics.
Sperm Whale Codas
Rhythmic sequences of clicks termed "codas" display regional dialect variation, identifying distinct vocal clans across oceanic social units.
Humpback Song Structure
Hierarchically structured vocal units, phrases, and themes that undergo rapid horizontal cultural transmission across ocean basins.
Communication vs. Language
In bioacoustics, "communication" refers to the transmission of signals that modify the behavior of receivers. Human language requires open-ended combinatorial syntax, displacement, and symbolic reference. While cetacean vocal systems exhibit extraordinary acoustic complexity, scientific evidence does not support referring to them as equivalent to human language.