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(static crackling)

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(electronic humming)

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It's very likely that when we do finally

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make a detection of interstellar intelligence

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it's gonna be very different from what we know.

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We could miss a signal if it was

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structured in such a way that we would

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have analyzed it as a human language,

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instead of as a non-human communication system.

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(suspenseful music)

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It's kind of best to understand

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what you have in your own backyard

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as you're looking up into the cosmos.

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(bird warbling)

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We have thousands, hundreds of thousands,

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probably millions of examples

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of evolved communication systems from our beautiful planet.

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The humpbacks just made a perfect animal,

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a perfect organism, a perfect system to look for life.

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And they have an extremely complex acoustic vocalization.

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This is the classic recording that changed hearts and minds

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the world over.
(whales vocalizing)

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In the early 1970s, Frank Watlington and Roger Payne's work,

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connecting these to the singing whales.

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I hear lone crooners calling by themselves.

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I hear these crazy males trying to attract a female,

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ultimately, but it's hard not to put all kinds

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of emotions and thoughts into these sounds,

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'cause they're so complex and marvelous.

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(bright music)
(whales vocalizing)

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These whales have evolved these incredible

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social institutions and complex vocalizations

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without technology.

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And it shows you that our exoplanets

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that are drifting around in the cosmos,

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they could be full of intelligent life

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that is not transmitting its presence.

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And then you look at the under the hood,

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at their brain, at the processor, it's magnificent.

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Their brains are laced with spindle neurons.

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And in humans spindle neurons are associated

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with language acquisition, social intelligence,

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facial recognition, and compassion.

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We also picked humpback whales

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because they use tools.

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Their tools are bubble nets, for example.

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It's like a giant effervescing bubbling cauldron

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that allows them to essentially create a barrier

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and force the prey up through the bubble net

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and trap them against the surface.

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And then you see the whales coming up

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with their giant maws and engulfing the fish school.

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The bubble tools tell you that they're goal directed,

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they're very good at planning for the future,

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anticipating events, and accommodating each other.

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Humpback whales get together to do bubble netting,

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and mitochondrial DNA shows that

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they're not related to each other necessarily.

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So they build these long-lasting relationships

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based on ability, like humans.

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And as far as we know, I don't know any other

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animal that forms long-lasting relationships

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based on ability.

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Work has also shown that some of these bonds

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are lasting across summers, decades,

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perhaps even lifetimes for some of these individuals.

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You can just call them economic bonds,

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but boy when you watch these whales

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they sure seem like friendships.

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(whales vocalizing)

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Humpback whales had a global communications system

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before we did.

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They've essentially had the ocean internet

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for millions of years.

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Sound speed in the oceans is five times

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faster than in air.

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So oceans are extremely acoustically conductive.

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Maybe a thousand kilometers away

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they can transmit a signal and receive it.

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The sounds in the ocean, in some ways,

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make amazing interstellar analogs.

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It's thought that blue whales, prior to human ship noise,

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could communicate from pole to pole

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with their very low frequency sounds.

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Some amazing work that's been done

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in the Southern Oceans.

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They have looked at the propagation of cultural ripples

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that move across the oceans.

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And these are song themes that populations innovate

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that ripple across the Pacific Ocean,

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that are picked up by non-interacting

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humpback whale groups.

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May take a couple of years for these

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song innovations to move across the Pacific,

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but that is absolutely remarkable

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and that suggests a global communication system.

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(whales vocalizing)

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I think at first they're saying

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is anybody out there.

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Kind of like we're doing with SETI.

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But I think that individuals, once they make contact

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can actually plan to meet each other

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in a few weeks or a month,

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and can signal to start heading toward each other.

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The challenge though, of course is,

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if you get a signal from another whale,

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like hey over here, there's a great food patch,

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or there's a reproductive opportunity,

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or I'm being harassed by killer whales, right.

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For an individual to respond to that

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it may takes days or weeks to get over there.

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So it can take many hours for these sounds

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to propagate across the oceans, and the whales,

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if they are communicating over these distances

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they're probably packaging and creating their signals

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for long distance transportation.

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And so this is kind of in a microcosm,

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kind of a SETI problem.

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How do they modify their communication system

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for contact that is hours away,

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and how they get together with other individuals

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when it takes weeks to months to be in contact.

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And that's similar to what we will start to experience

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when we put humans in the solar system.

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It'll be hours to get a signal

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and months to get contact again.

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Only the very nearest stars would be picking up

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on our old television signals,

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like Bozo the Clown and Howdy Doody

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are our ambassadors to the stars. (chuckles)

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So most of the years SETI's operated they've asked,

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"Is there a technology out there?"

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They haven't asked, "Is the message intelligent?"

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So what's new about SETI in our work

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is that we're introducing the idea of looking at

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the message itself and asking is it intelligent.

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And for that we had to develop an intelligence filter.

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What we want to do is quantify

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the degree of complexity

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in non-human communication systems.

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And we can do that with information theory.

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Information theory is the mathematics

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developed by a gentleman named Claude Shannon

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to measure basically the amount of information

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being sent through telephone lines.

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And we realized that we could apply this

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to non-human communication systems

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and quantify the amount of information in bits

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that they are transmitting to each other,

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and under what circumstances.

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And so I went looking for conditional probabilities

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between the signals of the humpback whales.

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And there are dependencies that we would call,

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in human language, syntax.

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So that's an example the insight information theory

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can give you to understand how animals

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have developed a kind of rule structure

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within their communication system.

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And you say well why would they do that?

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Well, it's because rule structure allows error recovery,

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and that has definite survival value in the open.

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It means that you can fill in the missing letters

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and words because you know the context.

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Information theory was not connected

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to animal communications before,

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so I think this is a breakthrough concept

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to go for diversity and intelligence

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outside of human intelligence.

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The units are not clear yet.

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How to compare, for example, whether a bee dance

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is more complex than an orca whistle system,

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but information theory is a bridge to that.

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That's another advantage of SETI,

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it gets you going what is the big picture,

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and how can I mix and match disciplines

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in order to answer deep questions.

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It's important to see that information theory

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is not about meaning, it does complexity.

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So in other words, you couldn't answer the question

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whether the humpback whales sang

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with information theory, yet.

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It will tell us how many whoops,

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how many throps, how many shrieks are being given.

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Are they being given in a conditional manner,

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in the same way that if you see a Q

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you know a U is going to follow.

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You could answer the question,

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given common symbols could you ever translate

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Shakespeare into humpback?

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In other words, does humpback have the complexity

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and rule structure to allow a translation

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of something written in human into humpback.

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If we pick up a communication,

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even a communication from a planet to its satellite,

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it would have structure that we could recognize

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with information theory.

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Anthropologists say that our social complexity

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led to our vocal complexity.

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In which case, information theory can measure

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the social complexity of an extraterrestrial civilization

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if we get signals.

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We have yet to unleash the power of information theory

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upon these signals,

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and so I think the future is very exciting.

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I think we can back out some idea of meaning.

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I think most importantly is the support

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from Templeton is that we can put this hydrophone array

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out into this complex feeding and hunting

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and bubble netting system.

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And now we can pinpoint individuals.

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Who's doing the calling and how other

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individuals are responding.

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So for the first time we're really gonna be able

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to put some sort of meaning to these sounds.

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And then the next round is to do the playbacks

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of these sounds to the animals to test ideas.

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It's getting inside their minds, right.

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What is their sensory world?

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What are these animals detecting,

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what are they feeling,

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the meaning of these sounds.

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I think that's exciting, and that's precisely

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why I'm working on it.

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Figuring out their basic intelligence

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and will we someday be able to have

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a conversation with them.

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The reason I support SETI is if somebody

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was nearby transmitting,

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it'd be embarrassing not to pick it up.

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I think the effort itself

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deprovincializes our thought about ourselves

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and it gets you thinking big.

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Let's face it, it's putting us in perspective.

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When we do that picture of the astronomer

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staring up at the sky and saying, "Are we alone,"

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two things strike me.

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One is that there's always animals,

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we need to pay attention to the non-human

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communication systems here for practice.

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But the other thing is, as we look up and say,

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"Are we alone," we're asking where do we fit in.

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(whale vocalizing)

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I think it was the song of the humpback whale

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that made us realize that there

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are otherworldly beings right here in our oceans.

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Now is there life out there in the universe?

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Statistically speaking it seems yes,

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there most likely is, and I think

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through these collaborative ventures

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between people in the animal sciences and SETI

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I think we'll get closer to this wonderful

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and perplexing question.

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(gentle music)