For all the world’s linguistic diversity, human languages still obey some universal patterns. These run even deeper than grammar and syntax; they’re rooted in statistical laws that predict how frequently we use certain words and how long those words tend to be. Think of them as built-in guardrails to keep language easy to learn and use.

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

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. However, research published in Science has uncovered the same statistical structure that is a hallmark of human language in humpback whale song.

But these are special occasion words, sprinkled sparingly into writing and conversation. The words in heaviest rotation are short and mundane.

All known human languages display a surprising pattern: the most frequent word in a language is twice as frequent as the second most frequent, three times as frequent as the third, and so on. This is known as Zipf’s law.

Research has revealed a previously undetected ‘language-like structure’ in whale song that was thought to be unique to human language.