Scientists are learning the basic building blocks of sperm whale language after years of effort

Scientists studying the sperm whales that live around the Caribbean island of Dominica have described for the first time the basic elements of how they might be talking to each other, in an effort that could one day help better protect them. Sperm whales are highly social mammals and communicate by squeezing air through their respiratory systems to make rapid clicks that can sound like an extremely loud zipper underwater. While scientists still don’t know exactly what those clicks mean, they have detected a "phonetic alphabet" the whales use to build the rough equivalent of what people think of as words and phrases.