
Female (above) and male sperm whales
Franco Banfi/BIOSPHOTO/Alamy
We’ve known for decades that sperm whales are highly intelligent and social. They are the largest of the toothed whales, one of the deepest-diving cetaceans, have the largest brains of any living creature, and their enormous heads are equipped with one of the world’s most powerful biological sonar systems. We also knew that their vocal communication is incredibly complex. Starting in the 2020s, we began using machine learning to decipher the language of sperm whales. By the early 2030s, we were able to converse with them.
Going back to 2021, an analysis of the logbook of…