Sperm Whales Use Human‑like Phonology

A new Proceedings B study finds sperm‑whale codas show layered acoustic structure — including click‑length and tone contrasts that function like vowels and phonological patterns in human language. The result suggests these whales evolved a phonetic system with parallels to human speech despite 90+ million years of separate evolution. — If nonhuman phonology is real and systematic, decoding animal languages moves from speculative to empirical, with consequences for AI research, marine policy, funding priorities and ethical debates about communication with other species.