Animals do impressive things all the time, but people weren’t quite ready to hear orcas imitating people speaking English.
Orcas, also known as killer whales, have a reputation as one of the most dominant animals in the ocean and are regularly praised for their intelligence, but this trick they can seem to do is a little eerie.
Just like any animal, they are studied vigorously by researchers, and recently, a 2018 study has been brought to people’s attention.
Apparently, the ocean behemoths can imitate human speech. While you might expect this to be rather cute, it has actually been called ‘demonic’ by some social media users.
Explaining the research behind this wild discovery, professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St Andrews and co-author of the study Josep Call spoke to CBSN.
He said: “It tells us that they are flexible vocal learners and their flexibility is not only in their vocal domain but also in their motor domain.
“They can also copy body movements, we knew this from before, but now we know that they can also copy sounds and sounds that are not in their natural repertoire.”
But how did they do it?
Well, the recording of the killer whale speaking is part of a 2018 study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
This saw experts from Germany, Spain, the UK, and Chile documenting how they discovered orcas could mimic human language.
Call also explained the researchers initially wanted to see ‘how flexible a killer whale can be’ when it comes to copying sounds they’re not used to.
The team carried out the research by first training a 14-year-old orca named Wikie to copy three familiar orca sounds made by her three-year-old calf, then exposing her to five orca sounds she had never heard before.
Wikie heard a human make three orca sounds, then six human sounds including the words ‘hello’, ‘Amy’, ‘ah ha’, ‘one, two’ and ‘bye bye’.
Now, it might not be the most convincing parrot or human speech, since we have, well… parrots, but it is still impressive.
After listening to Wikie’s responses, the team found that the orca was able to quickly copy the sounds, including nailing two of the human utterances on the first attempt.
Recordings of Wikie capture her attempts to mimic the human speaking to her, and while admittedly some of the attempts sound like they’ve come from a terrifying goblin, others are eerily accurate.
After hearing the orca, one Twitter user commented: “OK, that second hello was a little demonic. Was that really an orca, or the Devil speaking through a ghost box LOL.”
Another agreed and said: “The hello sounded demonic.”
However one user was particularly impressed and said: “This makes me tear up, the fact that we live in a such a beautiful world filled with wonderful creatures.”
