Whale imitates human speech

MADRID: A killer whale has been taught by scientists to copy human speech.

The researchers were studying a 14-year-old female killer whale named Wikie, who was well-trained and had been taught how to copy behaviours in a previous study.

Wikie was recorded mimicking English words like “hello”, “bye bye” and “one two”, as well as the name of her trainer, Amy.

“Killer whales use their blowhole to make noises, almost like speaking out of your nose, so we were not expecting it to be perfect,” said Dr Jose Abramson, a researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid, who led the study.

“But we were surprised by how close it was.”

The scientists wanted to understand how capable whales are of imitating noises, so they could understand how whales learn in their natural habitat.

In addition to human sounds, Wikie was exposed to noises made by another killer whale to see if she was capable of imitating them.

The results of the experiments were documented in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

After listening to the human or whale sound, Wikie was asked to reproduce them by her trainer saying “do this”.

Imitating vocal sounds in this way is a key component of language, and the ability to do so is rare in mammals besides humans. – The Independent