Scientists searching for life outside our planet say they’re one step closer to communicating with aliens, and they have a “conversation” with a humpback whale to thank for that.
In a new study, researchers from the University of California, Davis, the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and the Alaska Whale Foundation report that they had a 20-minute “conversation” with a humpback whale named Twain.
The group was studying humpback whale communication off the coast of Alaska when they received an underwater “greeting signal” from Twain.
Basically, the group’s goal was to trial-run communicating with non-human organisms and determine whether two-way communication between humans and whales was possible.
“Humpback whales are extremely intelligent, have complex social systems, make tools — nets out of bubbles to catch fish — and communicate extensively with both songs and social calls,” said Fred Sharpe, one of the authors of the study, in a press release.
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Their findings, published in the journal Peer J, detail how they were able to previously record several whale calls that they figured were used within the species to have so-called conversations, as opposed to other calls that alert their podmates to food or warn them of danger.
They returned to the ocean with these calls, and say that when they played the “hello” call on an underwater speaker, Twain responded with her own greeting, coming over to their boat and circling around.
From there, the group continued to play more calls to Twain, who responded with what are called “whup/throp” calls.
For 20 minutes, they say, a total of 38 calls were broadcast to the humpback, who responded back with 36 of her own. She also surfaced and performed a number of blow hole blows in that time.
“We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback ‘language,’” lead author Brenda McCowan said in a press release.
While the study is preliminary, scientists have long known that whales make underwater noises to communicate with each other. And while they don’t know exactly what each sound means, it’s believed some of these noises are used to socialize.
In this particular study, because Twain was able to match the interval variations between each call, mirroring a human-like conversational style, the researchers believe that Twain was participating in a two-way conversation.
Now, the researchers say their work could be the starting point for future attempts to communicate with intelligent species on Earth and beyond.
“Because of current limitations on technology, an important assumption of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrials will be interested in making contact and so target human receivers. This important assumption is certainly supported by the behavior of humpback whales,” said Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute, a co-author on the paper.
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