{"id":2040,"date":"2025-02-09T09:25:47","date_gmt":"2025-02-09T09:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/09\/whale-song-and-human-speech-are-very-similar\/"},"modified":"2025-02-09T09:25:48","modified_gmt":"2025-02-09T09:25:48","slug":"whale-song-and-human-speech-are-very-similar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/09\/whale-song-and-human-speech-are-very-similar\/","title":{"rendered":"Whale song and human speech are very similar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>2025-02-09 09:25:47<\/b><br \/>\n<BR>Whale song is remarkably similar to human speech.<BR><br \/>\nExperts were left with &#8220;goosebumps&#8221; when their work revealed a hidden structure inside the calls made by humpback whales is the same as a fundamental pattern that features in almost all human languages.<BR><br \/>\nThe experts found that whale song followed Zipf&#8217;s law, a rule found in the majority of human languages that says the most frequent word (&#8216;the&#8217; in English) is used twice as much as the second most frequent word (&#8216;of&#8217;).<BR><br \/>\nIt is the first time that Zipf&#8217;s law has been discovered in the speech of another species.<BR><br \/>\nDr. Simon Kirby, head of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh and co-author of the study, said: &#8220;It was one of those moments that was just total goosebumps.<BR><br \/>\n&#8220;I saw the graph appear and I thought, &#8216;I can&#8217;t believe this&#8217;.<BR><br \/>\n&#8220;What we&#8217;ve uncovered here is a deep commonality between two species separated by 70 or 80 million years of evolution. The common ancestor of whales and humans was probably some little shrew-like creature.&#8221;<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Visit Bang Bizarre (main website) <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><script src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player\/xtbac.js\" data-video=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2025-02-09 09:25:47 Whale song is remarkably similar to human speech. Experts were left with &#8220;goosebumps&#8221; when their work revealed a hidden structure inside the calls made by humpback whales is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2042,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040\/revisions\/2042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}