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

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.

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.