News, Research & Insights

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Keep up with the latest in Project CETI and hear directly from our team.

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UNESCO Book Day

April 23, 2024

April 23rd is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Book Day. Dedicated to amazing past and present literature and authors across the globe, this day pays tribute to them and highlights the need for access to diverse literature and authors. ‍

Project CETI Updates

April 4, 2024

CETI achieved several major milestones over the past year. We are excited to share these updates with you all and thank you for all your support!

Project CETI featured in the New Yorker

September 4, 2023

We’re thrilled to share that Project CETI is featured in The New Yorker this week in a piece authored by Elizabeth Kolbert (best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History).

CETI hosts second annual conference

August 8, 2023

In June, CETI hosted the second annual Decoding Communication in Nonhuman Species II conference at the University of California, Berkeley (US Berkeley) and is pleased to announce that the third annual conference will be held in June 2024 in Boston!

CETI

CETI Fellowship's First Graduation

July 10, 2023

We celebrate the graduation of the inaugural CETI Marine Conservation Fellows, achievements throughout the year, and introduction of the new cohort.

Fiona Korwin-Pawlowski, M.Sc. & Makeda Warner

In memory of Roger Payne

June 15, 2023

Roger may be best known for uncovering the features of whale songs, but in the process he also uncovered a fundamental truth about humans and our ability to amplify the magic of nature.

David Gruber & the CETI Team

Welcome to CETI’s new website!

May 9, 2023

Over the past year, the CETI team leaders and researchers took great strides towards our mission to listen to and translate whale communication. We’re excited to share our progress so far and bring everyone along on this journey with us.

David Gruber

Project CETI develops robotics to make sperm whale tagging more humane

April 14, 2024

Off the idyllic shores of Dominica, hundreds of sperm whales communicate deep in the sea. A multidisciplinary group of scientists, led by Project CETI, is using soft robotics, machine learning, biology, linguistics, natural language processing, and more to decode their communications.

The Robot Report

How Do You Say ‘Danger’ in Sperm Whale Clicks?

April 12, 2024

These massive sea creatures communicate in complex, techno-like patterns. Listening in could prove key to saving them.

Reasons to Be Cheerful

What Happens When a Marine Biologist and an Artist Work Together?

April 3, 2024

Many of Joan Jonas's recent works have been inspired by her passion for nature and animal life. Jonas's latest work, To Touch Sound (2024), is inspired by her friendship with the scientist David Gruber, founder of Project CETI.

MoMA Magazine

AI Can Help Translate Alien Language

March 5, 2024

How communicating with whales could unsettle our basic notions of intelligence.

The Atlantic

How First Contact with Whale Civilization Could Unfold

February 26, 2024

If we can learn to speak their language, what should we say?

The Atlantic

How AI is Decoding the Animal Kingdom

January 18, 2024

Scientists are eavesdropping on animal conversations. Will generative AI enable us to talk back?

Financial Times

How advanced is whale talk? - David Gruber and Shane Gero

December 14, 2023

Soon after whaling ships began operating in the North Pacific, an interesting trend emerged. Within just a few years, whalers saw a 58% drop in their successful strikes. Sperm whales had suddenly become harder to kill— they had begun fleeing the boats.

TED-Ed Video

Using Machine Learning to Listen to Whales

November 30, 2023

For millennia, humans have regarded other species with curiosity and wonder.

Born Curious Podcast

These 5 animals have culture. Here’s what they can reveal about our shared evolutionary experience

November 16, 2023

Scientists are working to understand how culture shapes different species’ evolution, from bugs to birds.

Salon

Dominica Establishes World’s First Sperm Whale Reserve, a Boost for Climate, Biodiversity and the Local Economy

November 13, 2023

Protecting the country’s whales sequesters as much carbon as taking 5,000 cars off the road every year – it also bolsters the local economy and paves the way for other countries to safeguard this at-risk species elsewhere.

National Geographic

Gods Among Us

September 29, 2023

For centuries, humans have recognized the mystic sanctity of whales and their oceanic hymns. What kind of wisdom could we uncover if we stopped to listen?

Atmos

Research study insights from distinguished professor David Gruber

September 25, 2023

CUNY Distinguished Professor David Gruber founded the Cetacean Translation Initiative – Project CETI – which seeks listen to and translate whale communication.

The Ticker

Can AI translate what whales are saying to each other?

September 21, 2023

Imagine, says Tom Mustill, a biologist turned nature film-maker, that we are sperm whales in the Caribbean, nattering away to one another in a code of clicking.

The Times

The Animals Are Talking. What Does It Mean?

September 20, 2023

Language was long understood as a human-only affair. New research suggests that isn’t so.

New York Times

AI could help us talk to animals

September 10, 2023

Scientists use artificial intelligence to study animal communication. AI can help identify the meaning and context of animal sounds. Project CETI uses AI and underwater technology to study sperm whale communication.

Warp News

Project CETI captures birth of sperm whale in Dominica’s waters

September 7, 2023

The nonprofit organization Project CETI, along with its local charitable organization Project CETI Dominica, has documented an extraordinary event in Dominica’s waters: the birth of a sperm whale.

Dominica News Online

Can we talk to whales?

September 4, 2023

Researchers believe that artificial intelligence may allow us to speak to other species.

The New Yorker

Can We Decipher a Whale's First Sounds?

September 4, 2023

The scientist David Gruber explains the mission of Project CETI, and what his team has learned about how whales communicate.

The New Yorker

This video captures a rarely seen sperm whale birth. It’s beautiful.

August 31, 2023

The last scientific record of a sperm whale birth was 1986, without audio or video. New recordings of the whales’ behavior during the birth will give researchers new insight.

National Geographic

How artificial intelligence could help us talk to animals

August 17, 2023

What might sperm whales and other animals be saying to each other?

Science News Explores

Google Translate for whales? How AI is being used to speak with animals

June 15, 2023

A new wave of researchers are using machine learning to understand animals on their own terms

Dazed

How Humans Are Learning to Speak Whale

June 6, 2023

Humans, who have long dreamed of interspecies communication, are now working to decode the calls of two whale species. But our efforts to understand our underwater neighbors require more than just scientific investment—they take real empathy.

Atmos

I Spent My Life Saving the Whales. Now They Might Save Us

June 5, 2023

More than fifty years ago, my team and I first discovered that whales sing to each other

Time

How Scientists Are Using AI Tech To Communicate With Animals

May 21, 2023

On the "In Real Life" season finale, Sam Eaton examines how AI technology is opening up new possibilities for scientists communicating with animals — from sending messages to elephants on the plains of Kenya to mimicking honey bees in Germany and bat sounds in Israel.

Scripps News

Can Understanding Whale Speech Help Us Talk to Aliens?

May 13, 2023

Biologist David Gruber thinks decoding the language of whales could be just the first step in understanding what other lifeforms are saying—in this world and out of it.

Daily Beast

Twenty youths complete training in National Geographic Photo Camp

April 11, 2023

Twenty youths from across Dominica have now honed their skills in photography after participating in a four-day photo camp organized by the National Geographic Explorers in partnership with the locally-based Project Cetacean Translation Initiative (CETI).

Dominica News Online

Could Chat GPT Talk to Whales?

March 18, 2023

The sound of sperm whales. Its a sound that haunted sailors for centuries.

Real Science

Who Speaks for the Oceans?

September 1, 2022

Few people are better qualified to answer the question “Who Speaks for the Oceans?” than David Gruber, a marine biologist and whale whisperer who founded Project ceti—the Cetacean Translation Initiative.

The New Yorker

The Animal Translators

August 30, 2022

Scientists are using machine learning to eavesdrop on naked mole rats, fruit bats, crows and whales — and to communicate back.

New York Times

A race to converse with, and save, the ocean’s brainiest eco-predators

July 14, 2022

In the 2016 sci-fi movie “Arrival,” a linguist and a theoretical physicist race against time to communicate with endangered extraterrestrial heptapods wishing to share their wisdom and technologies with the human race so it will survive and one day return the favor.

University of California

Follow Anything: Open-Set Detection, Tracking, and Following in Real-Time

April 4, 2024

Tracking and following objects of interest is critical to several robotics use cases, ranging from industrial automation to logistics and warehousing, to healthcare and security.

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

Stickiness in shear: Stiffness, shape, and sealing in bioinspired suction cups affect shear performance on diverse surfaces

March 26, 2024

Inspired by the diversity of multiple aquatic species, we investigated how bioinspired cups with different disc shapes performed in shear loading conditions. These experiments highlighted pertinent physical characteristics found in biological discs (regions of stiffness, flattened margins, a sealing rim), as well as ecologically relevant shearing conditions.

Bioinspiration & Biomimetics

Detecting the Presence of Sperm Whales’ Echolocation Clicks in Noisy Environments

March 24, 2024

Sperm whales navigate underwater with a series of impulsive, click-like sounds known as echolocation clicks. These clicks are characterized by a multipulse structure (MPS) that serves as a distinctive pattern. In this work, we use the stability of the MPS as a detection metric for recognizing and classifying the presence of clicks in noisy environments.

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing

Studying the effect of camera tag associated white light on the diving and foraging behavior of Eastern Caribbean sperm whales

January 1, 2024

Studying the behavior of animals roaming the deep-sea is challenging and is driven by technological developments.

iScience

Vowels and Diphthongs in Sperm Whales

December 4, 2023

Sperm whale vocalizations are among the most intriguing communication systems in the animal kingdom. Traditionally, sperm whale codas, or groups of clicks, have been primarily analyzed in terms of the number of clicks and their inter-click timing.

OSF Preprints

A Theory of Unsupervised Translation Motivated by Understanding Animal Communication

September 21, 2023

Recent years have seen breakthroughs in neural language models that capture nuances of language, culture, and knowledge. Neural networks are capable of translating between languages -- in some cases even between two languages where there is little or no access to parallel translations, in what is known as Unsupervised Machine Translation (UMT).

arXiv

Inter-pulse estimation for sperm whale click detection

September 21, 2023

Sperm whales are characterized by the inter-pulse interval (IPI) of their vocalization, which is a function of the whales’ size. In this paper, we propose a new methodology for detecting and extracting features from the IPI of sperm whale clicks.

IEEE

Evidence of social learning across symbolic cultural barriers in sperm whales

July 7, 2023

We provide quantitative evidence suggesting social learning in sperm whales across socio-cultural boundaries, using acoustic data from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

arxiv

Approaching an unknown communication system by latent space exploration and causal inference

March 20, 2023

This paper proposes a methodology for discovering meaningful properties in data by exploring the latent space of unsupervised deep generative models. We combine manipulation of individual latent variables to extreme values outside the training range with methods inspired by causal inference into an approach we call causal disentanglement with extreme values (CDEV) and show that this approach yields insights for model interpretability.

arXiv

Toward understanding the communication in sperm whales

June 17, 2022

Machine learning has been advancing dramatically over the past decade. Most strides are human-based applications due to the availability of large-scale datasets; however, opportunities are ripe to apply this technology to more deeply understand non-human communication.

iScience

Deep Machine Learning Techniques for the Detection and Classification of Sperm Whale Bioacoustics

August 29, 2019

We implemented Machine Learning (ML) techniques to advance the study of sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) bioacoustics. This entailed employing Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to construct an echolocation click detector designed to classify spectrograms generated from sperm whale acoustic data according to the presence or absence of a click.

Scientific Reports

Listen to the Whales!

We’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest breakthroughs and progress.

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