Killer whale can mimic human voice, scientists discover

LONDON, Feb. 2 — A killer whale can successfully pronounce human
words like “hello,” “bye bye,” “one, two” and “Amy” after a brief training,
according to a study published Wednesday by a team of international
researchers.

The subject of the study, a whale named Wikie, is a 14-year-old female orca
living in a French aquarium with her three-year-old calf. According to a
study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences, researchers from Germany, Britain, Spain and Chile
found that Wikie learns so quickly that she copied the most testing sounds
during the first 10 trials and three at the first attempt. At first, the
research team made Wikie get the “copy” order by training her to mimic
three familiar orca sounds made by her calf Moana. Then she was trained to
copy five sounds belonging to other orcas she had never heard before,
including a sound resembling a creaking door and blowing a raspberry.

Finally, Wikie was exposed to a human making three of the orca sounds and
six human voices, including “hello,” “Amy,” “ah ha,” “one, two,” and “bye
bye.” Though the words are short and simple, Josep Call, professor in
evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St. Andrews and a
co-author of the study, said the founding is “plausible.” “I think here we
have the first evidence that killer whales may be learning sounds by vocal
imitation, and this is something that could be the basis of the dialects we
observe in the wild,” said Call. Whether the ability of mimicking sounds
is special to Wikie or can be found in all orcas needs further research on
wild killer whales, the researcher added. Did Wikie know what the meaning
of the human sounds she was copying was? Call said no. “We have no evidence
that they understand what their ‘hello’ stands for.” – XINHUA