For the first time in history, scientists have established communication with a humpback whale, opening new possibilities for understanding interspecies interaction and preparing for contact with extraterrestrials.
The team of scientists—from the SETI Institute, the University of California, Davis, and the Alaska Whale Foundation—were studying humpback whale communication off the coast of Alaska when they detected the underwater “greeting signal” from a whale called Twain.
Humpback whales produce complex songs and social calls that vary across regions and seasons, suggesting that they have a rich and dynamic culture. But what do these sounds mean? And can we learn to understand them? These are some of the questions that the researchers are trying to answer with their project Whale-SETI.
Contact calls are similar to a human greeting. Whales use them to call over other whales or let each other know where they are, lead author Brenda McCowan, a professor at UC Davis’s School of Veterinary Medicine, told Business Insider.
“They are one of the most common signals within the humpback whale social sound repertoire,” Fred Sharpe, co-author and principal investigator with the Alaska Whale Foundation, told Business Insider.
Meaning, if the scientists waited 10 seconds before playing a call back to Twain, she would in turn wait 10 seconds before responding, McCowan said. This type of interval matching suggests Twain was engaged in an intentional exchange, she added.
“It certainly felt like we had been heard,” Sharpe told BI, emphasizing that their work is done with a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service and readers should not try this at home (or sea). “And we hope that she felt the same way, too.”
“We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback ‘language,'” McCowan said in a statement.
“An important assumption of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrials will be interested in making contact and so target human receivers,” sort of like how Twain responded to the contact call from the scientists, Doyle said in a statement.
Doyle and his colleagues at SETI are working with whale and animal experts at UC Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation to create intelligent filters to aid in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The scientists played a previously recorded humpback whale contact call through an underwater speaker, which resulted in Twain approaching the boat. He circled the boat for a while before responding. The conversation lasted for 20 minutes, and during this time the whale made noises in response to each record.
The researchers believe that this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback ‘language’.
“Whale research has indicated if you’re intelligent, curiosity comes along with that, and you want to make contact,” Doyle said.
Scientists believe that by learning how to communicate with another intelligent species on our planet, we can better prepare for the possibility of encountering one beyond it. With this in mind, scientists are hoping a previously successful conversation between humans and whale could help them work out how to reach out to aliens.
The findings following the conversation were published in the journal Peer J. The study is a milestone in the field of animal communication and a significant leap forward in our understanding of interspecies interaction.
Relevant articles:
– Scientists Contact Whales in World-First Communication Experiment
– Scientists Communicate With Whales for the First Time in Groundbreaking …
– Scientists Talk With Whales for First Time in Practice for … – Newsweek
– Scientists’ first-of-its-kind human-to-whale conversation could lead to alien contact