I have found cause to do stories about needing look no further than our own back yard to find life that is alien to us, and I expect to do more. At least I hope so. Previously I brought an article about the very small, creatures called Tardigrades which are apparently very nearly indestructible, and I mean indestructible as in when something comes along to wipe out the cockroaches, Tardigrades will be partying and not even notice. If you would like to read that story Here it is.

This time around the title goes to a creature of the very large variety. Whales are not news to anyone, at least I hope so, and I warn you there will be some proselytizing at the end of this article. First the interesting, educational, and I hope fun part.

It should come as news to no one that whales speak to each other. Whale song is thoroughly recorded and even partially decyphered, at least in terms of recognizable phrases common to specific pods. We have even been able to determine greetings between individuals, and alterations on phrases as they are used around the globe. We are certain that there is more to these sounds than simple animal noise, not your dog barking or a bird chattering, though even in those cases we are often able to discern a meaning, a warning or expressing a need. There is a structure to language that animal noises do not posses.

Certain species of birds have been notable for ability to mimic the sounds of other animals, even humans, and show some level of understanding of what they are hearing and saying. Apes have been frequent subjects of study and taught sign language, with which they have been able to clearly communicate their needs and feelings and abstract concepts such as emotion. Whales, Orcas and dolphins have been taught tricks for our entertainment and respond to voice as well as other commands. One Beluga apparently has been listening a little more closely than some of his cousins and is now trying to communicate back.

From the BBC

Beluga whale ‘makes human-like sounds’

Beluga whale Beluga whales are known as “canaries of the sea” because of their frequent, high-pitched calls

Researchers in the US have been shocked to discover a beluga whale whose vocalisations were remarkably close to human speech.

While dolphins have been taught to mimic the pattern and durations of sounds in human speech, no animal has spontaneously tried such mimicry.

But researchers heard a nine-year-old whale named NOC make sounds octaves below normal, in clipped bursts.

The researchers outline in Current Biology just how NOC did it.

The first mystery, though, was figuring out where the sound was coming from.

When a diver at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California surfaced saying, “Who told me to get out?” the researchers there knew they had another example on their hands.

The whales are known as “canaries of the sea” for their high-pitched chirps, but while a number of anecdotal reports have described whales making human-like speech, none had ever been recorded.

Once they identified NOC as the culprit, they caught it on tape.

Here is the sound bite

While I agree it does not sound like a human speaking, there is an eerie reminiscence to a child idly singing a nonsense song. And, hey, cut him a break, he is whale, does not have the same anatomy as we do and hears us distorted through the water. Remember “Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home?”

Seriously, analysis of the sounds draws a significant difference between normal whale communication and what is presented here. What will it sound like when an alien intelligence contacts us for the first time?
Possibly, for the first time another intelligent creature on this planet has apparently tried to initiate contact through language.

From the Current Biology Website

Summary
Although dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have been trained to match numbers and durations of human vocal bursts [1] and reported to spontaneously match computer-generated whistles [2], spontaneous human voice mimicry has not previously been demonstrated. The first to study white whale (Delphinapterus leucas) sounds in the wild, Schevill and Lawrence [3] wrote that “occasionally the calls would suggest a crowd of children shouting in the distance”. Fish and Mowbary [4] described sound types and reviewed past descriptions of sounds from this vociferous species. At Vancouver Aquarium, Canada, keepers suggested that a white whale about 15 years of age, uttered his name “Lagosi”. Other utterances were not perceptible, being described as “garbled human voice, or Russian, or similar to Chinese” by R.L. Eaton in a self-published account in 1979. However, hitherto no acoustic recordings have shown how such sounds emulate speech and deviate from the usual calls of the species. We report here sound recordings and analysis which demonstrate spontaneous mimicry of the human voice, presumably a result of vocal learning [5], by a white whale.

Let the proselytizing begin
Whaling goes back through the history of mankind to prehistoric times. They were valued for the oil that is derived from their fat, their meat, for Ambergris which was once very common in cosmetics and considered an aphrodisiac by some, for bone, and for the ivory of the teeth of some species. For more on this check out Whale World.Com At one time, there was cause if not justification for the slaughter of whales.

One time I know of, a whale did in it’s own way try to communicate its displeasure of that practice. Many will have read Melville’s “Moby Dick” and not realize the story to have a basis in fact. The story of The Essex, a whaling ship that was pursuing a pod and in an uncharacteristic display was in turn attacked by a bull sperm whale, who turned and rammed the ship repeatedly until it was destroyed.

In this modern age there is no more reason for hunting these creatures and yet it is permitted under certain treaties because various indigenous people who have virtually abandoned every other part of their history except in the academic sense still derive some sense of manhood out of random and pointless killing. Because under the guise of scientific research certain nations continue to slaughter animals we know to be intelligent by the hundreds (reported, and regularly more go unreported) yet for all the claims of science, the profitable meat and other products find their way onto market shelves.

What kind of science is it to kill for profit?
What does it say about a culture that it kills what it claims to respect for the sake of mummery?
What does it say about a species that we kill what we could be learning from, what is trying to speak to us?

Why should we be projecting this information out into space megabytes at a time, and still think any other intelligent species would:

A: Want to come here and talk to us?
B: Come here and easily justify treating us the same way?

Proselytizing over

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