The phonology of sperm whale coda vowels Project CETI 2026-04-15 | Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) is a nonprofit organization, as well as a collaboration with the National Geographic Society, that is applying advanced machine learning and state-of-the-art robotics to listen to and translate the communication of sperm whales.CETI scientists led by CETI Linguistics Lead Gašper Beguš have revealed that not only do sperm whale vocalizations sound like human vowels, they also behave like them, revealing pattern-like structures across several linguistic dimensions.Discover more in the paper here: doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2994 Authored by: CETI Linguistics Lead Gašper Beguš, CETI Linguistics Team Member Maksymilian Dąbkowski, CETI Linguistics Team Member Ronald Sprouse, CETI Founder and Lead David Gruber, and CETI Biology Lead Shane Gero.Animation: Meghan Fenske
Project CETI’s autonomous custom glider system Project CETI 2026-04-28 | Project CETI’s autonomous custom glider system can monitor sperm whale populations and collect sound and behavioral data from individual whales for months at a time.Learn more in the paper “Backseat driver architecture to passively follow sperm whales by their voices with an autonomous underwater glider” in Scientific Reports here: nature.com/articles/s41598-026-43138-y Authored by: CETI’s Underwater Acoustics Lead Roee Diamant, Yeshayahu Pewzner, CETI Underwater Acoustics Team Member Guy Gubnitsky, CETI CEO and Founder David Gruber, CETI Marine Operations Lead Dan Tchernov, Laurent Beguery and Jeremy Sitbon. Animation: Adrien Gentils
Project CETI WhAM (Whale Acoustics Model) Project CETI 2025-12-26 | WhAM is a transformer-based audio-to-audio model designed to synthesize and analyze sperm whale codas.github.com/Project-CETI/whamParadise O, Chen L, Muralikrishnan P, Flores H, Pardo B, Diamant R, Gruber DF, Gero S, Goldwasser S. 2025. Towards A Translative Model of Sperm Whale Vocalization, accepted, NeurIPS 2025.Animation: Meghan Fenske
Whale Vowels Project CETI Project CETI 2025-12-26 | Project CETI sperm whale vowels.Animation by Meghan Fenskenationalgeographic.com/animals/article/sperm-whale-communicate-vowelshttps://direct.mit.edu/opmi/article/doi/10.1162/OPMI.a.252/133906/Vowel-and-Diphthong-Like-Spectral-Patterns-in
