Spotlight on Science: Speechscapes & Whale-igraphy

THE REMARKABLE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN HUMAN SPEECH AND HUMPBACK WHALE VOCALIZATIONS. Northern California and Mendocino Coast speech scientist and author Howard Steven Pines will describe an exciting discovery about the complexity of humpback whale vocalizations. Applying cutting-edge analytical techniques to the study of whale songs recorded by Maui’s Pacific Whale Foundation, Pines found striking similarities in the phonetic architectures of human speech and humpback vocalizations: stunning, quantitative evidence for the basis of a potentially complex language!