Three sperm whale calves. (Amanda Cotton)
Five Israelis have been invited to join a pioneering global research project aimed at listening into and understanding the language of sperm whales, the animals with the biggest brains on the planet.
Project CETI — Cetacean Translation Initiative — forms part of TED’s Audacious Project program, which annually selects what it calls “big, bold solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges.”
CETI seeks to provide the first-ever blueprint of another animal’s language and maybe even to enable humans to communicate with these great mammals, which are ranked as vulnerable worldwide by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and as endangered in the US and the Mediterranean.