WHALE LEARNS SAME

LANGUAGE AS DOLPHINS

Two months after a beluga whale was introduced into a new facility with the dolphins, scientists found that it began to imitate their whistles. The 4-year-old whale was moved in 2013 to live in the Koktebel dolphinarium in Crimea.

And as the whale learned to communicate in the dolphins’ language, scientists found that the whale began losing its own. “Two months after the beluga’s introduction into a new facility, we found that it began to imitate whistles of the dolphins, whereas one type of its own calls seemed to disappear,” said

researcher Elena Panaova, of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. The researchers have currently recorded more than 90 hours of audio of the whale communicating like the dolphins.

In general, dolphins communicate using two kinds of sounds, “whistles” and “clicks.” Clicks are used to sense their surroundings through echolocation, while they use whistles to communicate with other members of their specie, which is what the whale was mimicking. Beluga whales are highly intelligent and have been known to imitate people. In 2012 a beluga began speaking with similarities to human speech patterns, indicating that the whale was trying to talk to his human captors.

However, researchers argue this case is more pioneering because the whale has given up speaking ‘beluga’ to order to adapt with the dolphins.