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How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication
What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill—the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breached onto his kayak—asks this question in his thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication.
“When a whale is in the water, it is like an iceberg: you only see a fraction of it and have no conception of its size.”
On September 12, 2015, Tom Mustill was paddling in a two-person kayak with a friend just off the coast of California. It was cold, but idyllic—until a humpback whale breached, landing on top of them, releasing the energy equivalent of forty hand grenades. He was certain he was about to die, but they both survived, miraculously unscathed. In the interviews that followed the incident, Mustill was left with one question: What could this astonishing encounter teach us?
Drawing from his experience as a naturalist and wildlife filmmaker, Mustill started investigating human–whale interactions around the world when he met two tech entrepreneurs who wanted to use artificial intelligence (AI)—originally designed to translate human languages—to discover patterns in the conversations of animals and decode them. As he embarked on a journey into animal eavesdropping technologies, where big data meets big beasts, Mustill discovered that there is a revolution taking place in biology, as the technologies developed to explore our own languages are turned to nature.
From seventeenth-century Dutch inventors, to the whaling industry of the nineteenth century, to the cutting edge of Silicon Valley, How to Speak Whale examines how scientists and start-ups around the world are decoding animal communications. Whales, with their giant mammalian brains, virtuoso voices, and long, highly social lives, offer one of the most realistic opportunities for this to happen. But what would the consequences of such human animal interaction be?
We’re about to find out.
“When a whale is in the water, it is like an iceberg: you only see a fraction of it and have no conception of its size.”
On September 12, 2015, Tom Mustill was paddling in a two-person kayak with a friend just off the coast of California. It was cold, but idyllic—until a humpback whale breached, landing on top of them, releasing the energy equivalent of forty hand grenades. He was certain he was about to die, but they both survived, miraculously unscathed. In the interviews that followed the incident, Mustill was left with one question: What could this astonishing encounter teach us?
Drawing from his experience as a naturalist and wildlife filmmaker, Mustill started investigating human–whale interactions around the world when he met two tech entrepreneurs who wanted to use artificial intelligence (AI)—originally designed to translate human languages—to discover patterns in the conversations of animals and decode them. As he embarked on a journey into animal eavesdropping technologies, where big data meets big beasts, Mustill discovered that there is a revolution taking place in biology, as the technologies developed to explore our own languages are turned to nature.
From seventeenth-century Dutch inventors, to the whaling industry of the nineteenth century, to the cutting edge of Silicon Valley, How to Speak Whale examines how scientists and start-ups around the world are decoding animal communications. Whales, with their giant mammalian brains, virtuoso voices, and long, highly social lives, offer one of the most realistic opportunities for this to happen. But what would the consequences of such human animal interaction be?
We’re about to find out.
320 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2022
389 people are currently reading
10729 people want to read
About the author
Tom Mustill
2 books87 followersI was first a biologist, working with endangered species. Then I switched and spent fifteen years making nature documentaries with people like Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough.
Then a humpback whale breached onto me when I was kayaking, this led to a life-changing adventure culminating in my becoming involved in efforts to use AI to translate the communications of whales! I wrote about this for my first book.
My great passion was always reading and in becoming a writer I get to go deeper and more playfully into my favorite parts of filmmaking – following heroic and fascinating people on their adventures, reading hundreds of complicated scientific papers, and finding ways to connect these.
I am married to Annie and live in London with her and our two young daughters, Stella and Astrid.
Then a humpback whale breached onto me when I was kayaking, this led to a life-changing adventure culminating in my becoming involved in efforts to use AI to translate the communications of whales! I wrote about this for my first book.
My great passion was always reading and in becoming a writer I get to go deeper and more playfully into my favorite parts of filmmaking – following heroic and fascinating people on their adventures, reading hundreds of complicated scientific papers, and finding ways to connect these.
I am married to Annie and live in London with her and our two young daughters, Stella and Astrid.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 372 reviews
August 31, 2022
What an adventure! Mustill uses an almost Hitchcockian narration – he starts by describing a near-death experience during whale-watching and then takes a reader on a mindblowing journey, both in geographic and intellectual terms. His curiosity, fueled by this unforgettable encounter, drives him to fascinating places and meetings with extraordinary people. While this is mainly a popular science book, it also blends in travelog, nature, and even tech writing. The first-person perspective works perfectly, engaging the reader, and the style is fresh and witty.
I first read about this book in a New Yorker piece by Elizabeth Kolbert, in which she also wrote about the latest Ed Yong book, An Immense World – and I think that if you like both of those authors, you will love “How to Speak Whale” as well.
Thanks to the publisher, Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
I first read about this book in a New Yorker piece by Elizabeth Kolbert, in which she also wrote about the latest Ed Yong book, An Immense World – and I think that if you like both of those authors, you will love “How to Speak Whale” as well.
Thanks to the publisher, Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
December 13, 2022
Mr. Mustill's musings are engaging enough, but they're not the highlight of this book. Communication with animals, and the research on the subject, has been an interest of mine for decades. And, frankly, not much has happened in my lifetime.
I remember in the 80's when the, now thoroughly-disgraced, John C. Lilly, wrote of his JANUS Project to communicate with dolphins. After nearly 40 years, I still remember the acronym stood for the Joint Analog Numerical Understanding System. (I think I had a Commodore 64 in my house at the time.) Of course, nothing ever came of it.
But today, we have true artificial intelligence. We have machine-assisted learning. We have crowd-sourcing and satellite imagery. It's a whole new world, and technology is being brought to this heretofore unsolvable communication problem in new, creative, and exciting ways.
This is not the emphasis of the book, it's merely a part, a good-sized chunk towards the end. But for me, this look at the cutting edge of current research was worth the price of administration.
The rest was very nice too. Nature and animal lovers will enjoy it.
I remember in the 80's when the, now thoroughly-disgraced, John C. Lilly, wrote of his JANUS Project to communicate with dolphins. After nearly 40 years, I still remember the acronym stood for the Joint Analog Numerical Understanding System. (I think I had a Commodore 64 in my house at the time.) Of course, nothing ever came of it.
But today, we have true artificial intelligence. We have machine-assisted learning. We have crowd-sourcing and satellite imagery. It's a whole new world, and technology is being brought to this heretofore unsolvable communication problem in new, creative, and exciting ways.
This is not the emphasis of the book, it's merely a part, a good-sized chunk towards the end. But for me, this look at the cutting edge of current research was worth the price of administration.
The rest was very nice too. Nature and animal lovers will enjoy it.
September 17, 2022
Tom Mustill is a man after my own heart. This book is a love letter to cetaceans, to language, and to communication stripped of human exceptionalism.
Our biggest downfall as a species when it comes to understanding other animals is that we feel an overwhelming need to feel we're still better, smarter, and more impressive than them. This leads to the ridiculous bias that our way is the only way, and if it's not the only way, it has to, at the very least, still be the ultimate way. So we've created the concept of "language" and narrowed its definition to cover, barely, the ways people communicate around the world (and not even all of them) to the exclusion of very obvious ways other animals communicate. I can't believe there are, genuinely, people who will argue that sign language is not a language.
Daniel L. Everett, who is a brilliant linguist, keeps insisting that we are the only animals with culture. I have no idea why he feels it's necessary to do that, but I would love to know what he thinks about this book. We are barely starting to scrape the surface of how other animals perceive the world (An Immense World), just as we're also finally confronting how much we're interfering in their lives by being so noisy (Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, Fathoms: The World in the Whale), among other catastrophic disruptions.
I find it really funny that our way to tell whether animals have languages is whether they can learn to speak English, but we are utterly unable to communicate on their terms. Says more about us than them. I hope the AIs they're developing allow us to do it their way soon.
Absolutely listen to the audiobook version of this if you can, or find the recordings on the publisher's website, they add a lot to the text.
Our biggest downfall as a species when it comes to understanding other animals is that we feel an overwhelming need to feel we're still better, smarter, and more impressive than them. This leads to the ridiculous bias that our way is the only way, and if it's not the only way, it has to, at the very least, still be the ultimate way. So we've created the concept of "language" and narrowed its definition to cover, barely, the ways people communicate around the world (and not even all of them) to the exclusion of very obvious ways other animals communicate. I can't believe there are, genuinely, people who will argue that sign language is not a language.
Daniel L. Everett, who is a brilliant linguist, keeps insisting that we are the only animals with culture. I have no idea why he feels it's necessary to do that, but I would love to know what he thinks about this book. We are barely starting to scrape the surface of how other animals perceive the world (An Immense World), just as we're also finally confronting how much we're interfering in their lives by being so noisy (Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, Fathoms: The World in the Whale), among other catastrophic disruptions.
I find it really funny that our way to tell whether animals have languages is whether they can learn to speak English, but we are utterly unable to communicate on their terms. Says more about us than them. I hope the AIs they're developing allow us to do it their way soon.
Absolutely listen to the audiobook version of this if you can, or find the recordings on the publisher's website, they add a lot to the text.
January 20, 2023
Very fascinating. Granted, I have biology degree and have taken several animal behaviour courses as part of my learning, so I may be bias but this book was incredibly interesting.
June 7, 2025
Cómo hablar balleno inicia con el relato del autor sobre una mañana durante sus vacaciones en la costa californiana en la que salió a navegar en kayak junto a un contingente liderado por un guía local. Al adentrarse en el mar, se vieron rápidamente rodeados por una inusual cantidad de ballenas, a punto tal que les resultaba muy dificultoso mantener una distancia prudente con ellas. En un momento dado, sin previo aviso, una ballena saltó en el aire y cayó directamente sobre el kayak que ocupaba Tom y una amiga suya. Ambos resultaron increíblemente ilesos, amén de haber sido sumergidos quien sabe cuantos metros bajo el agua. Por su parte, luego del salto, la ballena se alejó lentamente sin atacarlos ni demostrar un comportamiento agresivo.
El incidente, que quedó registrado en video, generó en Mustill una gran incógnita: ¿por qué hizo eso la ballena? Al autor le encantaría poder comunicarse con la ballena para averiguarlo pero, claro, ello es imposible.. ¿o no?
Este es el disparador del camino que emprende Mustill en busca de respuestas. El eje de sus averiguaciones fue lograr conocer con la mayor precisión posible las aptitudes comunicacionales de los cetáceos que, por supuesto, están íntimamente relacionadas con su inteligencia. Para ello recorrió varios puntos del planeta hablando con los máximos referentes científicos en la materia: entrevista a quien descubrió los "cantos" de las ballenas; participa de la autopsia de una ballena encallada; tiene acceso al análisis de un cerebro de ballena; entrevista a los creadores de herramientas a base de IA que intentan decodificar lo que "dicen" las ballenas, entre otras experiencias. Es un camino interesante, regado de datos muchas veces increíbles, no sólo de ballenas sino de todo tipo de animales.
En el que para mi es el mejor capítulo del libro, Anthropodenial ("antroponegación"), Mustill explica que desde hace mucho tiempo los humanos se conciben a sí mismos como superiores a todo el resto de los animales en función de una serie de aptitudes que serían exclusivas de la humanidad. Pero con el correr de los años y los estudios científicos, muchas de esas supuestas aptitudes exclusivas (creación y uso de herramientas, cooperación, memoria, comportamientos sociales como el amor y el duelo, reconocimiento de rostros, entre muchas otras) fueron halladas en otros animales. Sin embargo, buena parte de la comunidad científica parece estar en estado de negación (de ahí el título del capítulo), minimizando los hallazgos, muchos de ellos abordados en el libro, o directamente desacreditándolos.
En ese contexto, en mi opinión el gran valor del libro se encuentra en que Mustill logra dotar de un fin, de un objetivo, a todos estos descubrimientos sobre las capacidades de comunicación de los cetáceos: la comprobación científica de la inteligencia animal, de aptitudes por mucho tiempo pensadas como exclusivas de los humanos, obliga a redefinir la forma que tenemos de relacionarnos con ellos. Si un animal tiene inteligencia, tiene sentimientos, capacidad de comunicarse e incluso -como se sospecha- conciencia, eso genera la necesidad de un vínculo diferente, de un trato diferente, como se ha demostrado a través de la historia con diferentes especies, incluidas las propias ballenas luego del descubrimiento de sus "cantos".
A partir de esta tesis, todos los esfuerzos para lograr "hablar" con las ballenas dejan de ser un mero capricho y pasan a tener un peso, un objetivo, una razón de ser.
El incidente, que quedó registrado en video, generó en Mustill una gran incógnita: ¿por qué hizo eso la ballena? Al autor le encantaría poder comunicarse con la ballena para averiguarlo pero, claro, ello es imposible.. ¿o no?
Este es el disparador del camino que emprende Mustill en busca de respuestas. El eje de sus averiguaciones fue lograr conocer con la mayor precisión posible las aptitudes comunicacionales de los cetáceos que, por supuesto, están íntimamente relacionadas con su inteligencia. Para ello recorrió varios puntos del planeta hablando con los máximos referentes científicos en la materia: entrevista a quien descubrió los "cantos" de las ballenas; participa de la autopsia de una ballena encallada; tiene acceso al análisis de un cerebro de ballena; entrevista a los creadores de herramientas a base de IA que intentan decodificar lo que "dicen" las ballenas, entre otras experiencias. Es un camino interesante, regado de datos muchas veces increíbles, no sólo de ballenas sino de todo tipo de animales.
En el que para mi es el mejor capítulo del libro, Anthropodenial ("antroponegación"), Mustill explica que desde hace mucho tiempo los humanos se conciben a sí mismos como superiores a todo el resto de los animales en función de una serie de aptitudes que serían exclusivas de la humanidad. Pero con el correr de los años y los estudios científicos, muchas de esas supuestas aptitudes exclusivas (creación y uso de herramientas, cooperación, memoria, comportamientos sociales como el amor y el duelo, reconocimiento de rostros, entre muchas otras) fueron halladas en otros animales. Sin embargo, buena parte de la comunidad científica parece estar en estado de negación (de ahí el título del capítulo), minimizando los hallazgos, muchos de ellos abordados en el libro, o directamente desacreditándolos.
En ese contexto, en mi opinión el gran valor del libro se encuentra en que Mustill logra dotar de un fin, de un objetivo, a todos estos descubrimientos sobre las capacidades de comunicación de los cetáceos: la comprobación científica de la inteligencia animal, de aptitudes por mucho tiempo pensadas como exclusivas de los humanos, obliga a redefinir la forma que tenemos de relacionarnos con ellos. Si un animal tiene inteligencia, tiene sentimientos, capacidad de comunicarse e incluso -como se sospecha- conciencia, eso genera la necesidad de un vínculo diferente, de un trato diferente, como se ha demostrado a través de la historia con diferentes especies, incluidas las propias ballenas luego del descubrimiento de sus "cantos".
A partir de esta tesis, todos los esfuerzos para lograr "hablar" con las ballenas dejan de ser un mero capricho y pasan a tener un peso, un objetivo, una razón de ser.
"I therefore think we have a choice: to continue to believewhatever we want about the inner worlds and communications of cetaceans andother species and project it onto them, or to make the effort of finding outwhat is really there. This matters because speaking is one of the last absolutesupports of human exceptionalism, one of the few remaining things we believeonly humans can do. It matters because our exceptionalism is dangerous to us,too. When we see ourselves as above or outside the rest of the living world and don't value our ecosystems and life-forms, we take them for granted and use them up. Ultimately, it matters for our own self preservation: to a large extent, our survival on this planet depends on recalibrating our conception of how human beings fit in among the other lives on Earth."
January 13, 2023
EeeeOoooooooEeeeeeeee (clicking noises)*
Nailed it.
*Translation:
Shakespeare and Company Year of Reading 2023 - January pick
This felt like it was trying to do two things at once - (i) be one man's love letter to, and account of his encounters with, whales, and (ii) be an account of whale-human interactions throughout our shared history - and not really 100% succeeding at either.
It also makes the fatal mistake of referring to people whose books you'd rather be reading.
All in all, a frustrating start to 2023, readingwise.
PS: It would have been amazing if this whole book had been written in Whale (and if there was an accompanying audiobook of whale noises)
Nailed it.
*Translation:
Shakespeare and Company Year of Reading 2023 - January pick
This felt like it was trying to do two things at once - (i) be one man's love letter to, and account of his encounters with, whales, and (ii) be an account of whale-human interactions throughout our shared history - and not really 100% succeeding at either.
It also makes the fatal mistake of referring to people whose books you'd rather be reading.
All in all, a frustrating start to 2023, readingwise.
PS: It would have been amazing if this whole book had been written in Whale (and if there was an accompanying audiobook of whale noises)
June 17, 2023
I wanted to like this book, it starts out strong but in the end it could have used better editing. It's too repetitive, I feel like the author at times is only giving us surface level information, and even though the book's description emphasizes the novel applications of AI, the author doesn't reach this until chapter 10 (of 12). The author also makes some weird, borderline inappropriate comments fetishizing cetacean sex life. These do not read well in the current decade. Not sure why there is so much hype about this book, seems like chapter 10 was just a big reveal for projects by Amazon et al. I'm looking forward to a better read about cetaceans.
January 14, 2024
A fascinating overview of what we know about animal communication, particularly when it comes to whales and other cetaceans, and the current research into learning more.
September 12, 2022
Hope of Connection
The most important, and human, question we ask ourselves is, “are we alone?”. Normally that question makes us think of connecting with aliens in space, but in doing so we forget the aliens all around us — animals, especially whales.
This book goes on a quest to understand the whales — their biology, their intellect, and their communication, even their culture. We learn about the advances we’ve made in interpreting the vocalizations of whales.
The result is unexpectedly moving and profound. This book is a great read, especially paired with Ted Chiang’s short story “The Great Silence”.
The most important, and human, question we ask ourselves is, “are we alone?”. Normally that question makes us think of connecting with aliens in space, but in doing so we forget the aliens all around us — animals, especially whales.
This book goes on a quest to understand the whales — their biology, their intellect, and their communication, even their culture. We learn about the advances we’ve made in interpreting the vocalizations of whales.
The result is unexpectedly moving and profound. This book is a great read, especially paired with Ted Chiang’s short story “The Great Silence”.
October 21, 2023
basic point: AI is now being used to help analyze animal sound recordings in hopes of making sense of their meaning. Takes a LOOOOONG time to get there, with some entertaining facts along the way, not not enough real content.
Penultimate chapter my fav because it reminds us -- engagingly -- that we always place ourselves at the center of the universe or hierarchy, until we learn more, and then we are humbled, and thus that more humility awaits.
Penultimate chapter my fav because it reminds us -- engagingly -- that we always place ourselves at the center of the universe or hierarchy, until we learn more, and then we are humbled, and thus that more humility awaits.
January 9, 2023
A 2022 staff favorite recommended by Natalie. Read her review on our blog, Shelf Life: https://shelflife.cooklib.org/2022/11...
Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...
Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...
November 19, 2024
No tengo palabras. He llorado varias veces con este libro. Si te interesa la etología, el comportamiento animal y sobre todo los cetáceos, es sin duda un libro que deberías leer. Es denso a nivel de datos científicos pero creo que es precisamente lo que pretende: arrojar luz en medio de este tema tan desconocido.
Infinitamente agradecida por haber podido disfrutar de este librazo. Volveré a él 🧡
Infinitamente agradecida por haber podido disfrutar de este librazo. Volveré a él 🧡
November 5, 2023
A wonderful book with lots of different aspects to enjoy. There are the wonderful descriptions of cetacean (and other animals') communicaitonss, social connections, and other activities; there are the author's personal encounters with cetaceans; there is the science behind animal activity and communicaitons; and there is the progress that technology and AI in particular are helping us make in understanding the other life with which we share the world.
Only one word of warning: There definitely is a lot of (well-explained) science in the book.
I will be recommending this book to a lot of friends!
Only one word of warning: There definitely is a lot of (well-explained) science in the book.
I will be recommending this book to a lot of friends!
March 19, 2025
Mijn type boek: interdisciplinaire zoektocht naar taal en intelligentie bij dieren. We zijn gemaakt uit dezelfde code (DNA), uiteindelijk zijn er meer overeenkomsten dan verschillen, als je het superieure (westerse) mensbeeld maar los laat.
Wel heel veel weetjes en heel veel voetnoten (zeker een derde van het boek bestaat uit bronvermelding)
Gelezen in de boekenwurm challenge 2025 maart: dier op de omslag. Ook voor mijn PEPE IMPACT project
Wel heel veel weetjes en heel veel voetnoten (zeker een derde van het boek bestaat uit bronvermelding)
Gelezen in de boekenwurm challenge 2025 maart: dier op de omslag. Ook voor mijn PEPE IMPACT project
February 23, 2024
This is a good audiobook because they include the whale sounds WeeooooOooOoooo
April 28, 2025
For a book about whales, I was pleasantly surprised by the time allocated to the variety of other animal research the author chose to highlight. A great impetus for a novel and a thought-provoking end - all in, a solid work.
March 11, 2024
A lot of mention of concepts, systems, and people I met during my PhD, but still enjoyable. Felt like very little time relatively was spent on the bioacoustics side, compared to other parts of computational ecology - photo-id is important but should it have been given so much space?
August 27, 2024
hell yeah… i love whales
November 29, 2022
This is undoubtedly one of my best reads this year. As a language lover, the title immediately piqued my interest. Little did I know it would open up a vast world I barely knew anything about. Before this, my only knowledge about past efforts to communicate with another animal species came from the documentary Project Nim. But oh boy, there is so much more advanced work being done in the field (or rather at sea) right now.
The first time I took a dive of faith (hah) and submerged myself in the open ocean I remember being mind-blown and overwhelmed by how life was teeming under water. Having been enamoured with outer space since my childhood made me feel like I had missed the spaceship parked in my backyard when as an adult I discovered the underwater world anew. The feeling was all the more acute because the oceans have been right here on Earth all this while. In fact, 70% of the Earth is water and as air-breathing land beings we really fail to appreciate the oceans as much as we do our skies and land.
But now learning about the mysterious aquatic world of the cetaceans and how uncannily similar they are to us not just in terms of communication but also culture (for e.g. they mourn their dead for days after their passing, catchy songs may be picked up and sung by whales in foreign pods, some individuals even rape or kill for pleasure ?!) got me thinking about how much more we are missing just because we are not looking in the right places. "Stupid big fish" is thus a sorely outdated characterisation of whales, one that might just suit us humans more than them.
Tom goes beyond whale talk to present page after page of surprising and often shocking facts about other animals. Did you know inside every whale and dolphin flipper is a limb with digits that looks like a hominid hand with fingers (eery), or that a monkey was employed as a railway signalman for 9 whole years and paid food rations (what in the world), or that a parrot had once asked the question "what colour?" in a mirror self-recognition test when it saw in itself a colour not shown to it before (grey). That is the first record of an animal asking a question of its own accord, made even more amazing because colour is a category word, an abstract concept unlike noun words which are easy for animals. There are so many more intriguing stories I could cite from the book, but then I would pretty much have to copy the whole book here, so I will leave it at that.
Finally, I am thrilled about the prospect of a breakthrough in animal communication after reading this book. It will forever change the way people view animals and interact with them. Here's a prediction statement for 2055 (from Britt and Aza, founders of Project CETI - Cetacean Translation Initiative, a TED Audacious Project) and a couple other favourite lines of mine from Tom:
"Nature documentaries could be subtitled. Ships can speak to whales, dolphins, orcas, and other marine mammals to let them know of our approach, reducing deadly ship strikes to a minimum. New perspectives of what it means to be alive, to love, to live on this shared planet, are integrated into human culture, changing the perspective of ourselves and our identity as a species. We learn that we are not alone in the universe. We gain deep new insight into the plural nature of consciousness."
"Had we strayed into a whale conversation, accidentally punctuating a sentence of splashes?"
"To be alive and explore nature now is to read by the light of a library as it burns."
The first time I took a dive of faith (hah) and submerged myself in the open ocean I remember being mind-blown and overwhelmed by how life was teeming under water. Having been enamoured with outer space since my childhood made me feel like I had missed the spaceship parked in my backyard when as an adult I discovered the underwater world anew. The feeling was all the more acute because the oceans have been right here on Earth all this while. In fact, 70% of the Earth is water and as air-breathing land beings we really fail to appreciate the oceans as much as we do our skies and land.
But now learning about the mysterious aquatic world of the cetaceans and how uncannily similar they are to us not just in terms of communication but also culture (for e.g. they mourn their dead for days after their passing, catchy songs may be picked up and sung by whales in foreign pods, some individuals even rape or kill for pleasure ?!) got me thinking about how much more we are missing just because we are not looking in the right places. "Stupid big fish" is thus a sorely outdated characterisation of whales, one that might just suit us humans more than them.
Tom goes beyond whale talk to present page after page of surprising and often shocking facts about other animals. Did you know inside every whale and dolphin flipper is a limb with digits that looks like a hominid hand with fingers (eery), or that a monkey was employed as a railway signalman for 9 whole years and paid food rations (what in the world), or that a parrot had once asked the question "what colour?" in a mirror self-recognition test when it saw in itself a colour not shown to it before (grey). That is the first record of an animal asking a question of its own accord, made even more amazing because colour is a category word, an abstract concept unlike noun words which are easy for animals. There are so many more intriguing stories I could cite from the book, but then I would pretty much have to copy the whole book here, so I will leave it at that.
Finally, I am thrilled about the prospect of a breakthrough in animal communication after reading this book. It will forever change the way people view animals and interact with them. Here's a prediction statement for 2055 (from Britt and Aza, founders of Project CETI - Cetacean Translation Initiative, a TED Audacious Project) and a couple other favourite lines of mine from Tom:
"Nature documentaries could be subtitled. Ships can speak to whales, dolphins, orcas, and other marine mammals to let them know of our approach, reducing deadly ship strikes to a minimum. New perspectives of what it means to be alive, to love, to live on this shared planet, are integrated into human culture, changing the perspective of ourselves and our identity as a species. We learn that we are not alone in the universe. We gain deep new insight into the plural nature of consciousness."
"Had we strayed into a whale conversation, accidentally punctuating a sentence of splashes?"
"To be alive and explore nature now is to read by the light of a library as it burns."
September 25, 2023
i am now an audio book girly!!!
wanted to specifically get into non fiction audio books because i feel like there's a lot of non fiction im interested in but it can take me longer to read. plus my commute just became slightly longer as i changed job locations so wanted something to keep the ride exciting
they didn't have this as an audio book so i just splurged and bought it.
this is really cool stuff!! really cool if you love animals and are a bit of a linguistics nerd like me. doesn't hurt that the author/narrator has the sweetest little british accent in which he talks about whale penises and sea cucumber anuses.
very happy with my decision to get this as audio book. im still 61st in line for the audio book of this book about mushrooms (cry) so idk what i will do in the mean time (i love the library because it's free and im a big cheapo, but man oh man do i hate waiting)
wanted to specifically get into non fiction audio books because i feel like there's a lot of non fiction im interested in but it can take me longer to read. plus my commute just became slightly longer as i changed job locations so wanted something to keep the ride exciting
they didn't have this as an audio book so i just splurged and bought it.
this is really cool stuff!! really cool if you love animals and are a bit of a linguistics nerd like me. doesn't hurt that the author/narrator has the sweetest little british accent in which he talks about whale penises and sea cucumber anuses.
very happy with my decision to get this as audio book. im still 61st in line for the audio book of this book about mushrooms (cry) so idk what i will do in the mean time (i love the library because it's free and im a big cheapo, but man oh man do i hate waiting)
January 24, 2023
It was an unsatisfactory voyage, with only the occasional moment of inspiration or insight. I wasn’t interested in the author or any of the people he wrote about - I was interested in how to speak Whale - there were only a few pages on this.
I did love how much he loves whales though.
I did love how much he loves whales though.
June 12, 2025
Everybody should read this book. 🙏🏻
May 16, 2023
Amazing book. I really loved the deep dive into bioacoustics. As a marine mammal bioacoustian myself, it was really cool to see the field from the outside. I listened to the audiobook and I have to say, the addition of animal sounds and especially the last portion of the book was incredible! Would definitely recommend this book (especially to family members that always ask “What do you do again?”)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 29, 2023
This book will change your views on the world and enable you to break out of the human bubble. Tom Mustill fascinatingly recounts his experiences with whales, delving into various aspects of their language, intelligence, and communication. He explores how we humans might, in the future, manage to communicate with them ourselves. Beautiful, sad and totally worth reading!
October 29, 2024
4.5 Such an educational, interesting story of animal communication and technology. This book was filled with so much information and well written. It shows what little we actually know about animals today. So cool!
November 29, 2024
Fascinating read. Lots of new information wrapped in great storytelling. Gotta love them whales! My only disappointment is I didn't in fact learn to speak whale...
June 15, 2025
Really enjoyed it, interesting and thought provoking
February 16, 2025
Passionate but a little insubstantial. Author’s narration is very likeable.
“To be alive and study nature now is to read by the light of a library as it burns.”
“To be alive and study nature now is to read by the light of a library as it burns.”
October 13, 2025
This was just fabulous. Nature writing plus deep philosophical questions about humanity. Loved. Reminded me of Why Fish Don’t Exist
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