A connection between space and sea has been found
A group of scientists said they had a first-of-its-kind conversation with a humpback whale. And this communication may one day lead to communication between people and aliens (if any are found, of course).
The language of humpback whales is as alien to us as the speech of a race of aliens from another planet. The ability to communicate with marine mammals could one day help us communicate with intelligent aliens, say enthusiastic scientists.
An unusual exchange occurred between researchers and a female humpback whale in August 2021 for 20 minutes in the southeast Alaska. The scientists recorded a “contact” call that attracted the whale to their boat.
The marine mammal, named Twain, circled the team's boat and consistently responded in a conversational style to the “welcome call,” the SETI Institute said in a press release.
Dr. Brenda McCowan of the University of California, Davis, praised the results of the experiment.
“We believe this is the first such communication exchange between humans and humpback whales in a ‘humpback’ language,” admits McCowan.
Study co-author Fred Sharp notes that humpback whales are extremely intelligent and can actively communicate through both song and social calls.
Contact calls of sea giants are similar to human greetings. Whales use them to attract the attention of their fellow whales or to tell each other where they are, Brenda McCowan, a professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, told Business Insider.
“It's one of the most common signals in the repertoire. social sounds of humpback whales,” Fred Sharp, chief researcher at the Alaska Whale Foundation, explained to the publication.
Over the next 20 minutes, the scientists sent the same contact signal 36 times at different intervals, and Twain answered the call each time, even matching the intervals exactly.
This means that if the scientists had waited 10 seconds, Before “addressing” Twain, she in turn would wait 10 seconds before responding, McCowan emphasized. This type of spacing suggests Twain was engaged in intentional messaging, she added.
What does this have to do with talking to aliens? It turns out that Twain's behavior may be akin to how intelligent alien races might search for humanity, says SETI Institute principal investigator Lawrence Doyle.
“An important assumption about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that aliens will be interested in making contact and therefore target human recipients,” comments Doyle.
Laurence Doyle and his colleagues at SETI are working with whale and animal experts from the University of California, Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation to create intelligent filters that will help them in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence. By improving these tools, scientists could use them to identify intelligent signals from space in an attempt to make first contact with an alien race.
In the meantime, scientists said they hope similar work can be done with other intelligent animals on Earth, including other cetaceans (such as dolphins), as well as predators that cooperate to hunt, and other highly social fauna such as meerkats and elephants.
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