The words in heaviest rotation are short and mundane. And they follow a remarkable statistical rule, which is universal across human languages: The most common word, which in English is “the,” is used about twice as frequently as the second most common word (“of,” in English), three times as frequently as the third most common word (“and”), continuing in that pattern.

Now, an international, interdisciplinary team of scientists??that the intricate songs of humpback whales, which can spread rapidly from one population to another, follow the same rule, which is known as Zipf’s law.

The scientists are careful to note that whale song is not equivalent to human language. But the findings, they argue, suggest that forms of vocal communication that are complex and culturally transmitted may have shared structural properties.