Do you want to talk to whales, specifically humpback whales? Well, scientists from the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute say they have succeeded in doing just that.
SETI scientists had a “rare and opportunistic” acoustic turn-taking with an adult female humpback whale, known as Twain, in Southeast Alaska. Post hoc acoustic and statistical analyses of a 20-min acoustic exchange between the broadcast of a recorded contact call, known as a ‘whup/throp’, with call responses by Twain revealed an intentional human-whale acoustic (and behavioral) interaction.
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If you like Star Trek then you will remember the plot of the movie Star Trek VI from 1986. The film, set 300 years into the future, shows an Earth where the humpback whale has become extinct. Unfortunately, a powerful alien species had been communicating with them for years and threatens to destroy the Earth while looking into what happened to them.
Today, the story is being reversed by SETI scientists, who are trying to use whale sounds to learn how to possibly communicate with extraterrestrial species someday.
As SETI explained, “The study of nonhuman animal signals challenges and informs our search for nonhuman intelligence with the ultimate hope of deepening the human-animal relationship.”
SETI scholar Dr. Josie Hubbard told the New York Post, “Whales are a proxy for aliens. They’re intelligent creatures with a language that is foreign to us. The things we learn from communicating with whales could help us when it comes time to connect with aliens.”
SETI also points out that the diversity of nonhuman intelligence that exists on Earth has been revealed in a multitude of observational and experimental studies over the past several decades
The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is a majestic creature that can be found in all the world’s oceans. They are known for their acrobatic displays, such as breaching (leaping out of the water) and flipper slapping, and their complex songs.
According to NOAA Fisheries, the humpback whale gets its common name from the distinctive hump on its back. Its long pectoral fins inspired its scientific name, Megaptera, which means “big-winged” and novaeangliae, which means “New England,” in reference to the location where European whalers first encountered them. Humpback whales are a favorite of whale watchers―they are often active, jumping out of the water and slapping the surface with their pectoral fins or tails.
Humpback whales are baleen whales, which means they filter feed on small crustaceans called krill. They have long pectoral fins, which can be up to one-third of their body length, and a knobby head. Humpback whales are seasonal migrators, traveling long distances between their feeding grounds in polar waters and their breeding grounds in tropical waters.
As for their communication skills, SETI explained that whales are ancestrally remote to humans and resumed life in the oceans 60 million years ago. The humpback’s superlative acoustic prowess is likely underwritten by impressive mental abilities. The whale’s acoustic achievements include songs that are lengthy, rhythmic and constantly evolving. Structural parallels between human speech and humpback whale song (among vocalizations of other nonhuman species) include the use of a similar frequency band and are comprised of both tonal (voiced) and broadband (unvoiced) elements, and vocalizations of variable duration punctuated by silence (Pace et al., 2010). Their vocal repertoire also includes a panoply of less-studied social sounds (non-song sounds), including over 40 unique social calls
