Despite humans and whales being separated by millions of years of evolution, our vocalizations follow the same principle outlined in Zipf's law

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

Two new studies have found that whale song has structural similarities to human languages, especially when it comes to efficiency and brevity. It’s leading researchers to believe that evolutionary pressures might affect other complex communicators in similar ways.