Deep dive: What we are learning from the language of whales | James Nestor | TEDxMarin
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- čas přidán 10. 06. 2024
- With brains six times the size of our own, the planet’s greatest mammals force a rethink of our own place on planet Earth.
James Nestor is an author and journalist who has written for Outside Magazine, Men’s Journal, National Public Radio, The New York Times, Scientific American, Dwell Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. His book, DEEP: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What The Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was released in the United States and UK in June 2014.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
I am Japanese and I really hate and shame that my country still let people hunt whales and dolphins!!! I love the ocean mammals and we definitely need to stop the people killing them...!!!!!!!! I am so sorry...
♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
There's horrible bastards all over the planet Chunklet74. Keep doing you.
FK YOU DORPHIN!!
AND FK YOU WHARU!!
Chunk, We can't stop killing ourselves, let alone animals.
The saddest part about it all is they do it through a loophole by saying killing them is the only way to get the scientific research they need.
The fact of the matter is Japan kills Minke whales because they taste the best.
The book, “Mind in the Waters” has wonderful stories about cetaceans. My favorite bit of info about them is that when humpback whales go to Hawaii to give birth, they sing very long songs. Scientists have determined that they sing the same long song every year, with a new addition at the end each year. It’s like they’re teaching their history to their young and adding a new chapter each year. Fascinating!
Yes sounds like a genealogy
I am Faroese, and we hunt pilot whales. This really makes me question our tradition. Thank you for broadening my view of whales.
stop hunting pilot whales please thank you
Have you ever participated in a grind? I’m curious as to how you actually kill the whales. Also your tradition of hunting is sustainable, unlike large scale commercial whaling
@@conorlarkin7135 sustainable or not it still shouldn't happen. Its like allowing humans to be hunted, but only a small amount because its "sustainable"
Ani Skywalker I agree that sustainability isn’t the only factor that should be considered. I think the most important factor is the method of killing and the animals cognitive complexity, which yields a greater capacity for self-consciousness and a more robust sense of fear, dread and suffering. I actually think that all commercial whaling should be illegal, but I think the cases of aboriginal whaling should receive special consideration. In the example of the Faroe Islands, the small size and isolation of the islands creates obstacles for food sourcing and therefore they rely on local small scale farming (in which animals are slaughtered regularly) and hunting. I have difficulty telling populations, ones that don’t have the ready access to food that people in more commercialized and developed regions do, to change their practices.
However this debate about the Faroese practice may soon be moot as fewer and fewer people are consuming whale meat due to increasing levels of mercury in whales due to pollution, which itself raises another ethical question.
Ani Skywalker we already do. It’s called Genocide and Abortion (still genocide and infanticide).
Humanity won't be able to deal with the guilt it's about to face when we learn the extent of what we've done to other sentient beings of this planet.
Jack Humphrey so what
It's already happening, have you noticed how aggressive people are to vegans? It's ridiculous. If it was anything else it would just be an opinion, but vegans are challenging our morals and ethics by simply existing and the ego cannot handle it when the person's actions are questioned. Albeit this is a natural response to someone questioning your actions, it's just how the psyche works. I just wish people were more self aware and not just let their ego control them.
we will have to and we will
People are aggressive to vegans? It is to 99% the other way around where many vegans act like they found the only right way and they try to convert you every meal. I didn't saw once a meat-eating person even start to discuss about the topic with a vegan. It is always the vegans. (and I have no problem to talk about it but the way they talk is the problem.) The same way I don't have a problem to talk about religion.
Some people are not considerate when starting this conversation but we need to have it at some point. We are at a point were killing animals to survive is completely (for most of the world) optional at this point.
READ HIS BOOK!
He goes in to such great detail about these whales and their language there and also alot more about the dolphins aswell, and about freediving.
Super interesting!
It's called "Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves"
I spent months hearing cetaceans on sonar watch on a submarine in the U.S. Navy. It almost seemed like you could hear the emotion in their squeaking and whining that occurred during the clicks and pops... I've heard them follow us as though they were playing also when a bottom sounding research vessel used active sonar forcing the Cetaceans to swim away with sounds of fear and pain... These creatures are truly incredible!
That's an incredible experience. You're fortunate to have had that.
This is like the Arrival movie but with more purpose
Porpoise*
_Paws_ nice
Floppy Trombone Nice lol
Exactly
That was my exact thought. When we discover that whales can talk like us, it’s going to bring the earth to a stand still. Like in the bee movie when the bee first spoke on the news.
I like to imagine the whales are saying "friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend? friend?"
Aaron Miller more like Killer, Killer, Killer, Killer
Aaron Miller I think their vocabulary is a bit more complex than that.
@@sarahndipiti nah man, they're whales
Maybe it's like in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where its questioning its existence
more complex than ours actually
this is one of the most important TED talks I have ever watched
"...it will be harder to kill an animal that can speak it's name."
Have you seen what humans do to each other?
Exactly
@Shufei exactly. If whales are as smart as he guesses they are maybe it's no mistake that we aren't able to crack their code.
True, but outside of extreme circumstances, we don't typically kill each other to eat each other.
Yeah, it's still harder to kill a child than a rabbit. His point stands regardless of whether we kill humans or not.
Well, murder is illegal
You need a pod with a newborn. That way you can hear the other whales say "Hi" and get introduced. Maybe it can be mimiced.
What better way than focusing on a newborn whale that's learning its own language?
I totally agree with you. See the whole pod welcoming it into their family a most sacred experience
Brilliant
Zachary Thomas You're right, what could go wrong with a 50 ton carnivore when you mess with her calf and private space, let's give it a try :-)
The thing is, animals don't "learn" their language, they instinctively already know it the moment they are born.
@@MDProgramming No you are wrong. They have dialects and whales of the same race with very different dialects are unable to communicate and interact with each other. Thats already known.
If you stop the video at 2:28, you can see the standing waves inside the spermacetti organ produce the horizontal bars, with a SPECIFIC vertical spacing, which is the identifier for each animal, due to the geometry of the organ. The vertical spacing would be absolutely unique for each whale, like a fingerprint. After the horizontal startup tones, the clicks start, and these are echo location. I'm assuming the picture is a spectrogram, with frequency on the Y axis, higher frequency on top, and the X axis is time, of one minute, showing a full communication cycle. A lot of the click modulation is coming from the pressure waves of the right nostril passage, below the entire spermacetti organ, causing it to vibrate with lateral standing waves. This is what causes the frequency modulation of the previously smooth horizontal frequency tones. The frequency modulation is very complex, since each front-to-back acoustic standing wave is being interfered with, by several up-and-down standing waves, caused by the vibration from the bottom side of the spermacetti organ. This modulation happens because the right nostril is a flat bladder under the entire width of the spermacetti organ. So, that is how the physical tone modulation is done, and that physical setup would make it easy to repeat, identically each time.
So, what is the information content? The start is unmodulated, so that is saying "Hello, it's me". The modulated part of the left burst (the clicking) is mostly echo location. I count 24 high frequency clicks, which have most of the energy, which makes sense, as the higher frequencies will give better sonar resolution, when the echo bounces back. I think the real information of the message is the center part, where the tall frequency bands look somewhat like human speech on an oscilloscope. That is where the software could correlate with the actions of the whale who is speaking. Obviously, it is a blend of amplitude modulation, and frequency modulation. They could pack a LOT of information in a few seconds of that, since they are speaking in multiple tones, at the same time, compared to sequential human speech in one tone. Finally, the horizontal bars on the right side of the spectrogram are saying: "OK, that is what I had to say, someone else can talk now, this was me talking, I'm done now". So, the center of the spectrogram is the "speech" part, the horizontal bands on the left and right are formatting/Identification/echo location, and probably some political stuff, like "I'm dominant", etc. The formatting is like any computer language, where there is a protocol, with a header, main body that contains the message, and the end marker. You can see where the speech ends, the diagonals are like a person trailing off... "we'll that about does it for me, I'm done now"... that type of thing, like a slide whistle, an easy marker to listen for, so you don't interrupt someone while they are still speaking. The cool part would be seeing the slide whistle stop and go back down, and they would be saying "one more thing, I almost forgot to mention"...
So, the center of the message is the juicy part, and probably each pod has their own dialect, with distant populations not able to understand each other.
Best of luck with this research, it is so badly needed! ALL whale species must be saved from extinction, and brought back to their pre-industrial populations. I think Japan will be wiped off the map, by the planet, herself, for the horrific sin of killing these intelligent beings, who are probably far superior to us in every way.
The HAARP Report please pin this it’s extremely valuable information
"Wow!! You speak Whale!?" ~Dory 💙
they need u badly if they haven't already decoded the clicks.
subbed instantly to your channel btw
👊🏾😎
Wow
Killer closing line, kudos to James Nestor. We are not the only intelligent species on our planet.
Oh please let this project work, and may grants and funding flow!
They're probably like, "what are these little skinny baby whales doing out here all alone?"
I hope we get to know them before we lose them. I think it would be really interesting to see parallels and differences between communities outside our species with intelligence that equals our own.
Intelligence that equals our own?
Maybe you better look on man apes. Whales have much bigger brains, dolphins have 2 more lobes than we have.
They took a different course through evolution.
I guess we have not even started to grasp what their intelligence is like ...
@@arnonuhm4022 Agreed. It seems they're the original sentient beings. It boggles the mind to think of what they'd be capable of if we could communicate with them.
@@arnonuhm4022 when your world is blue and dark and empty......its basically the same as having a 32 cores processor to open word
I think we were just lucky to evolve into a dexterous species
I’ve been fortunate enough to swim with these magnificent animals in Dominica, a memory that will remain with me forever. Priceless....
Do you have to be an experienced diver to do that? I'd love for the chance to have that life experience!
Is there any update on his work? He mentions using the next two years to try and crack the code and now this video is 4 years old and I’m dying to see a sequel!
I'm ashamed of my country Iceland for insisting on hunting these magnificent creatures. Time to let go of this barbaric practice.
😥
Welp, I do like bacon and pulled pork sandwiches. Pigs are smart too. Do you also find them tasty?
@@CorePathway true but at this point pork is a staple food. With all the harm pollution does to oceans let’s not make them a snack too. Domesticated pigs are at least protected until they are killed
To be able to feel that sound.. Wow
MOUTHandHANDS We have subwoofers, thunder, loud and deep car exhausts, We've been feeling sound for as long as natural phenomena have been around. Having it be intense enough to raise your body temperature is pretty impressive though!
JustinL42 I meant to say To be able to feel that* sound 😁
MOUTHandHANDS Right on! 😁
they're capable of producing 230~db sounds, which would straight up kill you.
for context, NASA's Saturn V rocket was the loudest sound humans have ever created, at 204db.
I’m pretty sure there clicks are louder than a nuclear bomb
This project is the reason I still believe in humanity. I love whales with my entire heart! These beautiful mammals need to be save.
My heart breaks when I think of what we have done to these magnificent animals.
The man makes an incredible point at the end... here we are as a society searching the universe for intelligent life, when we completely turn a blind eye to the intelligent life in our own backyard
Man that footage of humans killing those majestic creatures with harpoons really made me ANGRY
Yeah definitely horrific, I couldn't watch !!
I have been searching for this video for ages! I watched this over 2 years ago and I remember my amazement and wanted to share it with others. I have seen so many TED Talks about whales trying to find this one, not that I'm complaining, they're all very interesting. The part that stuck with me the most was his ending statement, powerful.
It’s 2 years from this video. I was actually really inspired by this video. Listening to the clicks was out of this world.
First contact with E.T. visiting earth
Human: Welcome, it is such an extraordinary...
E.T. ignores Human and dives into ocean to make first contact
This is the most wonderful, incredible idea I've ever heard about! I'm in total love with this -- communicating with another species using actual language... if there was ever a spiritual experience, this is it. How can we follow this online? Does anyone know what's going on at present with the CETI Foundation?
I am right there with you. I very badly want to be a part of this. This just feels so important.
yup - the dolphins are saying this about humans... 'it's amazing, it's as if they're forming some sort of language. the grunts seem to be structured in some way.' 'i wonder if they're intelligent?' ;)
This video totally speaks to me, brought me to tears. I said something about how we're exploring new lives and civilizations in space, yet we have them right here on our own planet and we don't even understand what they're saying.
I think that what he said last is the most important part actually - if we are ever going to be able to communicate with an alien life form, starting here with communication with intelligent creatures can be seen as our tutorial level in this regard. How are we ever going to learn an alien language if we can't figure out what whales are saying? I mean:
Human: *points to landed space ship* What do you call that?
Alien 1:
Alien 2:
The opportunity for misinterpretations will be SO big.
Excellent video and presentation!
truly Awesome! Thank you!!! My heart aches, and I thank you for your efforts to save these gorgeous and wonderful animals!!! Thank you!!
Whaling=senseless killing.
Borderlands808 murder
Not if you eat the meat, use the oil, and bone marrow.
FXIIBeaver So as long as you use a person's bones and meat cannibalism is cool? The video clearly suggests they are intelligent, thinking creatures.
Plants don't grow in all places of the planet. What the rest of the world does with animals used for food isn't nearly as efficient.
Mateo Barrett not the same. But nice straw man.
Excellent, thank you for sharing.
Symbolic language? Probably. Pictorial language? You bet! One pic equals a thousand words? They send detailed pictorial images!
Leo Smith that = true
To send an image or memory telepathically to another individual's mind is essentially the ability to create an illusion. That's fourth dimensional communication.
What an interesting way to look at it, it could be possible and very mindblowing (to us)
@ALANSHEARERISGOD It is telepathy, and the mathematics you lack to understand why is Fourier's heat equation. Start there, or remain uneducated, the choice is yours. But I've shown you the door, the burden is now yours.
( I'll accept a mathematical argument on why I'm wrong, if you're capable of that! XD )
what if we brought woodcuts underwater with us that portray various objects familiar to the whales in relief so the whales can echolocate and "see" what the images are.
Whales and Dolphins are like humans of the Sea. I believe we are equal beings. spiritually they could be ahead of us.
Dolphins are definitely not ahead of us. They are amazing, but they're also kind of dicks. (I mean, so are humans, so I'm not judging).
That would be amazing to be able to communicate with these wonderful animals.
Incredible work!
BRAVO !!!! BRAVO !!!!
GREAT INICIATIVE !!!
GREETINGS FROM BRASIL
OUTSTANDING PRESENTATION!!!
Bravo!! This is fascinating!
I am so touched by this video!
Awesome presentation!
I've never seen such a powerful Ted Talk.
great presentation
Favorit Ted Talk of ALL TIME. Hope I get to meet you some day professor! 🐳🐋🐬
That was really amazing i agree 100% whales are fascinating to me also they have since i was a kid. Thank you so much for this video and all the ted talks in general keep up all the great work you all are doing in the 🌎 to open peoples minds ears and hearts 😉👍✌
Absolutely stunning idea! I hope you succeed. Truly incredible research proposal
Amazing, thank you.
Amazing. Thank you!!! 💞
Ever since I read The Uplift Saga by David Brin, I have watched for this kind of news. Whales are incredible.
I wish you and your people all the very best and hope that you have success...I too believe they are sentient beings with a communication system that at the moment is far, far beyond our understanding...
Where do I sign up!!! I want to dive with these guys...i ve been practicing holding my breath in the bathtub...im up to 30 seconds!
Where is the open source project using Neural Networks to discern patterns in various cetacean speech? If we had a data dump and network infrastructure, we could probably apply it to each species separately, as well as together to work out how it all goes. I don't see any such project...
lol dont practice in a bathtub practice on dry land you crazy person! You could hurt yourself!
keep it up! i got up to FOUR minutes within a few weeks... but practice dry, you could drown...
Or the bathtub could explode in a supernova!!!
15-20 cm of water can do that.
Bathtubs is dangerous.
Very insightful how Matt Groening walk us through the studies that influenced his writing on the "Night of the Dolphin" Halloween Special. This should be added on some Behind the Scenes special or something
Thank this man.
Such an awesome idea
Great talk
James is a fascinating speaker and writer
i just cried of emotion thank you amazing human cientist for doing this!you can saved them!and yes, they are much more than animals!they are here to heal and save us! since i started to meditated to listen them they comunicate with me and many many people though meditations of even dreams- so much more than human inteliigence(wich is not to much considering what we are doing to the earth). IN this quarentine we can hear them clearly! lets start it!if you need more info i can help it
This is amazing
AMAZING!!
Amazing video.
Awesome!!
I watched this video two times it was so interesting!
Great THANKS !!!
Excellent ending!!!
Love it!
Amazing!
professor dude hits blunt: we should talk to whales bro
This video should have a 1 billion views
Amazing vid
Bravo
Those last words were very impactful. Any progress update on the language?
We need sonic aerials that read their navigation signals as ultrasound images. They obviously use pictures of things to talk.
Thats actually very interesting. Hadn't thought of that, but it would make sense wouldn't it?
This guy is probably definetly onto something. 👆
Yes
This is like the best idea ever! Hope you succed!
What's intriguing to to me is what if this whole time they are trying to communicate with us as the same we are with them.
WOW ..... how right he is! Why invest in the orbit or further away, if the good old thing is sooooo close, but again, destroyed by humans?! Nice footage, GREAT speach👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
he deserves a standing applause
Thanks sr!! Hope some day I can help in something like this.
The best of luck and hope by this october is already done
Everyone should come together against the whale hunt. They are not even an unavoidable food source.
THIS IS WHAT TED TALKS ARE FOR
Inteligent life swimming right below out nose. Humans have built such a pedestal for ourselves.
Very entertaining.
we have hope finally
I’m very interested in what their consciousness would feel like if one day we could interface with them with the help of future computing and if they have access to higher dimensional understanding
It turns out that whales do have names, but the only name they give their children is Fred.
Thanks for the 🐟!
We definitely should try really hard to talk back I didnt know the clicks were so complex. Cool video.
I cried during that whaling clip😞
Liam Cahill did you cry like a woman? or like a little girl?
Me too!!
I couldn't see it. I'm starting to think there are times when I'm glad I'm blind.
Liam Cahill Do you cry yourself to sleep after 'Uncle Joey' touches you at night?
me too
Lately i been finding whales so fascinating! I never gave them ingerest growing up, but after hearing about their clicks i want to know more! ☺
Such underrated animals.
I would love an update on this mans research
I live near where this took place! Marin County Northern Cali
Facts ma man
7:35 yeah this is big brain time.
Jesus Christ this was mind blowing
it's even more then that. Whales carry ancient memories and wisdom. By understanding their language, we will get access to it. So keeping them alive is more important then ever (apart from the cruelty and stupidity to kill them).
I think that whale communication is over 99% telepathic because of their big brains, but the remaining primitive language that they use is 75% echolocation and 25% echolocation with identity recognition so they could tell who they are communicating with. This would be needed when they are hunting for example or even when they are "singing" songs.
These whales need to be saved