Whales And Humans Share Language “Laws”

We have something in common with humpback whales: a language principle known as Zipf’s law. After eight years of research, scientists found that these whales have a series of “words” in the form of grunts, shrieks, and moans. In humpback whale language, the most frequent “word” pops up twice as much as the second most frequent. Human language works the same way. “This made us realize that we’d uncovered a deep commonality between these two species, separated by tens of millions of years of evolution,” Simon Kirby of the University of Edinburgh said. (newser)