2026-10-12T20:47:23Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33568561 2026-09-15T09:33:22Z category_24400 portal_918 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Data from Oura and Gilman, "Information structure predicts timing in humpback whale song," (in review) Babirye Oura (24764639) Tucker Gilman (10764405) Animal behaviour animal communication systems whale song information theory continuation entropy uniform information density Megaptera novaeangliae humpback whales <p dir="ltr">In human speech, speakers pause more frequently at points in word sequences where many different next words are possible. These are points of high potential information content. A similar pattern has been reported in birdsong, raising the possibility that temporal organisation reflects information structure across diverse communication systems. Humpback whale song offers a compelling system to test this idea because it is hierarchically structured, culturally transmitted, and evolutionarily independent of birdsong and human language. We analysed 83 recordings of humpback whale song and found that the gaps between phrases became longer at points where there was more uncertainty about the next phrase type, consistent with the patterns reported in human speech and birdsong. We found no relationship between gap duration and the frequency with which phrases or phrase transitions were used. In a secondary analysis, we found evidence for Zipf's law of abbreviation within recordings, consistent with information-theoretic accounts of compression in communication. Our findings show that similar relationships between temporal organisation and information content have emerged repeatedly and independently in vocal communication systems in diverse environments. The coordination of temporal organisation with information content may be a general feature of efficient communication in systems of sequential vocalisations.</p> 2026-09-15T09:33:22Z Dataset Dataset 10.48420/33568561.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_from_Oura_and_Gilman_Information_structure_predicts_timing_in_humpback_whale_song_in_review_/33568561 CC BY 4.0