A study finds that whale songs are similar to human speech patterns after breaking down the sound lengths and frequencies used by the mammals.

Humpback whales learn their haunting melodies in much the same way humans learn words For all the world’s linguistic diversity, human languages still obey some universal patterns. These run even deeper than grammar and syntax;

The sounds that make up humpback whale songs follow some of the same statistical rules seen in human languages, which may be because of how they are learned