About

They Speak is a listening post for non-human communication. Each entry presents a recently-decoded finding from an animal species not as a paper to read but as something you can hear, sort through, and try to speak back to.

The site is built on public scientific data. The audio is synthesized from real timing data, not recordings — a sonification of structure. The text never claims more than the science does.

New species are added when the underlying research is solid enough to demonstrate, not when it is interesting enough to claim. The list will grow slowly.

How this site works

  1. Source. We pull raw CSVs from the published supplements — Sharma et al. (Nature Comms, 2024) for the codas, and the Project-CETI coda-vowel-phonology data for the vowels.
  2. Synthesize. Each click is a filtered noise burst at ~6.5 kHz. The rhythm is the recorded data — the timbre is approximated.
  3. Display. SVG waveforms, plain CSS, no recordings. Coda type, clan, named whale, vowel class — all read from the same join.
  4. Listen. You hear what they heard. You match what they said. We do not translate.

Working principles

  1. Do not claim to translate.
  2. Do not anthropomorphize.
  3. Cite the actual paper.
  4. The gap between hearing and understanding is the point.