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Humpback Whale Communication and the Search for Alien Intelligence_ --- Oct 10, 2023 4:41 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [What We Know About the U.S. Intelligence Community's Split on COVID-19 Origins](/video/PIMYtj8I/) ### What We Know About the U.S. Intelligence Community's Split on COVID-19 Origins [Humpback Whale Rescued from Shark Net in Australia](/video/6guvbTZw/) ### Humpback Whale Rescued from Shark Net in Australia [Search For Alien Life Just Got A $100M Boost](/video/M8xtF5t9/) ### Search For Alien Life Just Got A $100M Boost --- ## Transcript It's very likely that when we do finally make a  detection of interstellar intelligence, it's going   to be very different from what we know. We could  miss a signal if it was structured in such a way   that we would have analyzed it as a human language  instead of as a non-human communication system. It's kind of best to understand  what you have in your own backyard   as you're looking up into the cosmos. We  have thousands, hundreds of thousands,   probably millions of examples of evolved  communication systems from our beautiful planet. The humpbacks just made a perfect animal, perfect  organism, a perfect system, to look for life. And they have an extremely  complex acoustic vocalization. This is the classic recording that changed hearts  and minds, the world over. In the early 1970's,   Frank Watlington and Roger Payne's work  connecting these to the singing whales. I hear lone crooners, calling by  themselves. I. hear these crazy males,   trying to attract a female ultimately. But it's hard not to put all kinds of   emotion and thoughts into these sounds,  because they're so complex and marvelous. These whales have evolved these incredible  social institutions and complex vocalizations   without technology. And it shows you that our  exoplanets that are drifting around in the cosmos;   they could be full of intelligent life that is  not transmitting its presence. And then you look   under the hood at their brain, at the processor,  it's magnificent. Their brains are laced with   spindle neurons. And in humans, spindle neurons  are associated with language acquisition,   social intelligence, facial  recognition, and compassion. We also picked humpback whales because they  use tools. Their tools are bubble nets,   for example. It's like a giant effervescing,  bubbling cauldron that allows them to essentially   create a barrier and force the prey up through  the bubble net and trap them against the surface. Then you see the whales coming up with their  giant maws and engulfing the fish school. The bubble tools tell you that they're goal  directed, they're very good at planning for the   future, anticipating events, and accommodating  each other. Humpback whales get together to do   bubble netting and mitochondrial DNA shows that  they're not related to each other necessarily,   so they build these long-lasting relationships  based on ability like humans. And as far as we   know, I don't know any other animal that  forms long-lasting relationships based on   ability. Work has also shown that some of  these bonds are lasting across summers,   decades, perhaps even lifetimes, for some  of these individuals. You can just call   them economic bonds, but boy, when you watch  these whales - they sure seem like friendships. Humpback whales had a global communication system  before we did. They've essentially had the ocean   internet for millions of years. Sound speed in  the oceans is five times faster than in air,   so oceans are extremely acoustically conductive. Maybe a thousand kilometers away they can transmit   a signal and receive it. The sounds in the ocean,  in some ways, make amazing interstellar analogs. It's thought that blue whales, prior to human ship  noise, could communicate from pole to pole with   their very low frequency sounds. Some amazing  work that's been done in the southern oceans. We have looked at the propagation of cultural  ripples that move across the oceans. And these   are song themes that populations innovate  that ripple across the Pacific Ocean. That are picked up by non-interacting humpback  whale groups. It may take a couple years for   these song innovations to move across the  Pacific, but that is absolutely remarkable,   and that suggests a global communication system. I think at first, they're saying 'is anybody  out there?', kinda like we're doing with SETI. But I think that individuals, once they make  contact, can actually plan to meet each other in   a few weeks, or a month, and can signal to start  heading toward each other. The challenge though,   of course, is if you get a signal from another  whale like, hey over here there's a great food   patch, or there's a reproductive opportunity,  or being 'I'm being harassed by killer whales',   right? For an individual to respond to that, it  may take days or weeks to get over there. So it   can take, you know, many hours for these sounds to  propagate across the oceans and the whales if they   are communicating over these distances, they're  probably packaging and creating their signals   for long distance transportation. And so this is a  kind of in a microcosm, a kind of a SETI problem. How do they modify their communication system for  a contact that is hours away? And how they get   together with other individuals when it takes  weeks to months to be in contact. And that's   similar to what we will start to experience  when we put humans in the solar system. It'll be hours to get a signal  and months to get contact again. Only the very nearest stars  would be picking up on our   old televisions signals like Bozo the Clown and  Howdy Doody are our ambassadors to the stars. So most of the years SETI's operated, they've  asked is there a technology out there. They haven't asked is the message intelligent. So what's new about SETI in our work,   is that we're introducing the idea of looking at  the message itself, and asking is it intelligent. And for that we had to develop an intelligence  filter. What we want to do is quantify the degree   of complexity in non-human communication systems. And we can do that with information theory. Information theory is the mathematics,  developed by a gentleman named Claude Shannon,   to measure basically the amount of information  being sent through telephone lines. And we   realized that we could apply this to non-human  communication systems and quantify the amount of   information - in bits - that they are transmitting  to each other, and under what circumstances. And so I went looking for conditional  probabilities between the signals of   the humpback whales, and there are dependencies  that we would call in human language "syntax". So that's an example, the insight  information theory can give you. To understand how animals have developed a kind of  rule structure within their communication system. And you say, why would they do that? Well it's  because rule structure allows error recovery. And that has definite survival value in the open. Means that you can fill in the missing letters and  words because you know the context. Information   theory was not connected to animal communications  before, so I think this is a breakthrough concept   to go for diversity and intelligence outside of  human intelligence. The units are not clear yet   how to compare, for example, whether a bee dance  is more complex than an orca whistle system. But information theory is a bridge to that. That's  another advantage of SETI; it gets you going what   is the big picture? And how can I mix and match  disciplines in order to answer deep questions? It's important to see that information theory is  not about meaning. It does complexity. So in other   words, you couldn't answer the question; what  are the humpback whales saying? With information   theory, yet. It will tell us how many loops, how  many throps, how many shrieks are being given. Are they being given in a conditional manner,  in the same way that if you see a Q you know   a U was going to follow. You could answer  the question, given common symbols, could   you ever translate Shakespeare into humpback? In  other words, does humpback have the complexity   and rule structure to allow a translation  of something written in human into humpback. If we pick up a communication, even a  communication from a planet to its satellite,   it would have structure that we could recognize  with information theory. Anthropologists say that   our social complexity led to our vocal complexity. In which case, information theory can measure   the social complexity of an extraterrestrial  civilization, if we get signals. We have yet   to unleash the power of information theory upon  these signals. And so I think the future is very   exciting. I think we can back out some idea of  meaning. I guess most importantly, is the support   from Templeton is that we can put this hydrophone  array out into this complex feeding and hunting   and bubble-netting system. And now we can pinpoint  individuals; who's doing the calling and how other   individuals are responding. So for the first time,  we're really going to be able to put some sort of   meaning to these sounds. And then, the next  round is to do the playbacks of these sounds   to the animals to test ideas. It's getting inside  their minds, right? What is their sensory world? What are these animals detecting? What are  they feeling, the meaning of these sounds,   I think that's exciting. And that's  that's precisely why I'm working on   figuring out their basic intelligence, and will we  someday be able to have a conversation with them? The reason I support SETI is if  somebody was nearby transmitting,   it'd be embarrassing not to pick it up. I  think the effort itself de-provincializes   our thought about ourselves. And it gets you  thinking big. Let's face it; it's putting   us in perspective. When we do that picture of,  you know, the astronomers staring up at the sky   and saying 'are we alone'. Two things strike  me; one is that there's all these animals. We need to pay attention to the non-human  communication systems here for practice. But   the other thing is is we look up and say 'are  we alone', we're asking where do we fit in. I think it was the song of the humpback  whale that made us realize that there   are other worldly beings right here in our oceans. Now, is there life out there in the  universe? Statistically speaking, it seems   yes, there most likely is. And i think through  these collaborative ventures between people in   the animal sciences and SETI, I think we'll get  closer to this wonderful and perplexing question. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Humpback Whale Communication and the Search for Alien Intelligence","description":"Humpback Whale Communication and the Search for Alien Intelligence","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/1AbUurSg/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2022-04-19T16:34:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1AbUurSg.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/1AbUurSg/","duration":"PT12M59S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/1AbUurSg/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```