Can we talk to whales?

This week we’ll be diving into the world of whales - as well as dolphins and other cetaceans - with biologist and filmmaker Tom Mustill, author of the fascinating book How to Speak Whale. I first learned about Tom’s work in 2023 when I attended a talk he gave at the British Library, and he began with the story of how on a kayaking trip he was almost crushed by a breaching humpback whale.

After that experience, and the discovery that the whale may actually have saved his life by twisting in the air to avoid him, Tom became fascinated by the inner lives of these creatures, and by the exploding potential of technology, including AI, to monitor and understand what they’re getting up to beneath the waves. And there was one question he wanted to answer most of all about their complex communications: could we ever learn to understand them, even talk to them?

That might seem a crazy question, but the availability of massive amounts of data, combined with AI algorithms, is now opening a door to decoding the patterns and structures in the vocalisations of all kinds of species, like a kind of Google Translate but for animals.

I caught up with Tom to talk about the latest results, as well as what it’s like to be caught underneath a falling humpback - and why we should stop comparing animals’ abilities to ours, and instead open our minds to other kinds of experiences, to the alien horizons of their lives and worlds.

Tom’s home page

https://www.tommustill.com/

Tom’s book, How To Speak Whale: A voyage into the future of animal communication

https://www.tommustill.com/how-to-speak-whale

Footage of the humpback whale landing on Tom and Charlotte

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee79_7CZ0uM

How to be a whale: a half-hour listening journey

https://www.tommustill.com/howtobeawhale

Project CETI

https://www.projectceti.org/

Earth Species Project

https://www.earthspecies.org/

Happy Whale

https://happywhale.com/home

Tom’s humpback

https://happywhale.com/individual/1437

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