The most common word is used twice as often as the second most common word, three times as often as the third most common ...

Whale song, though technically not a language, is organized in a familiar pattern.

All known human languages display a pattern known as Zipf’s law. Now, researchers have found the same pattern in whale song.

Whales use moans, snores, chirps and cries that are known as whale song. And now, a new study has found that whale song is ...

Two new studies have found that whale song has structural similarities to human languages, especially when it comes to ...

Just like popular songs on TikTok, new humpback whale songs can rapidly spread across regions and populations to replace ...

For all the world’s linguistic diversity, human languages still obey some universal patterns. These run even deeper than ...

The animals’ complex songs share structural patterns with human language that may make them easier for whales to learn, a new ...

"Using insights and methods from how babies learn language allowed us to discover previously undetected structure in whale ...

The sounds that make up humpback whale songs follow some of the same statistical rules seen in human languages, which may be ...

A key discovery was that whale song follows Zipf’s Law—a principle in human language where the most frequently used words appear roughly twice as often as the second-most common words, three times as ...

Two studies reveal that the communication systems of most cetaceans examined adhere to the principles of efficiency and ...