2018, a study The headline was made when it was discovered that the prisoner orca, or killer whales, were able to mimic human utterances. A whale called Wiki lived in the anti-base Marineland Aquarium in France. Wiki was trained to create the words “Ahhh, ‘ahh,’ “Hello,’ “Amy,” and ‘One to Three.” (The Wiki can also make a creaking door-like noise to mimic the elephant’s call.)
It’s not really surprising that whales have the trick to mimic speech. They are very auditory animals, explaining Deborah Giles, Killer whale scientist Seadoc Societyorganisations that conduct and sponsor scientific research in Salish Sea.
“Killer whales make a living by being able to communicate across vast distances to know what their surroundings are, where they can find each other, and where they can find food,” she says.
Communication is just a part of who they are. Giles tells the story of a young Luna The killer whale in the south He was pulled away from his pod and trapped in the sound of a nootka off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Luna, isolated from others of his species, whom he would have communicated, began Imitation of sounds Obviously in an attempt to communicate with boats and other marine creatures in the area.
It’s part of Orca culture
Orcas is not just a social animal, but a cultural one, so it’s important to communicate with each other, Lori Marinoa neuroscientist who studies the intelligence and behavior of animals, and is particularly well known for his work with whales on the evolution of brain and intelligence.
Marino describes culture as a group of habits and behaviors that are learned and passed on from one animal to another, and from the older animal to the younger animal. Cultures range from orca groups and communities to other groups.
“Orca off the coast of New Zealand, for example, has a different culture than off the coast of the Pacific Northwest,” she says. “These cultural differences are learned and they really define who they are as a community.”
Most cultural behaviors are rather serious and involve hunting, feeding and developing young people. Others are just fun – or weird. In the summer of 1987, young orcas from some pods of the Southern resident Orcas began swimming with dead salmon on their heads. A few whales started it, and soon the salmon hat was the Orcapod’s rear baseball cap. By the next summer, I had a salmon hat. So last year. And then trendy It pops up again 2024.
In recent years, orcas have occasionally owned outside the Iberian Peninsula. The boat’s roundness has been destroyed. No one knows why, but it is definitely a cultural behavior that spreads from one whale to another.
read more: Instead of hunting in groups, orcas could be attacking a large white shark
Killer whales have huge brains
All this cultural communication requires a large, complex brain. When we hear that orca can mimic human speech, we may want to think: Wow, whales are very smart. They are almost like us. But when it comes to brain structure and brain possibilities, Marino says, it makes more sense to wonder if there are times when humans can make them look intelligent like Orca.
Orca’s brain weighs approximately 11 pounds. That’s 3.5 times the human brain. It’s also bigger than Orca’s body size, about 2.5 times the size you would expect from an animal of that size, Marino explains.
But it’s not just size. Orca’s brain is extremely complicated. Orca NeocorticMarino says, including, among other things, the areas involved in cognition, emotions, memory, and yes, communication, is the most wrinkled neocortex of the brains of animals on Earth, and is more wrinkled than the human brain.
All of these wrinkles allow more surface area of the brain to fit into the skull. Think of it like a flipped paper to fit in a specific space.
“There’s a lot to stuff in that skull,” Marino says. ORCA also has more neocortex than humans compared to the rest of the brain. “What I’m saying,” she says. “This means that it is a very elaborate brain in terms of neural tissue used in cognition, thinking, problem solving and higher processing.”
Why do orcas mimic humans?
Orcas communicates with whistles and clicks. That communication has a structure, a simple or less simple grammar, says Marino. Scientists have yet to “crack that code,” she adds, but she points out that Orca’s ability to imitate is telling you two things. One, Orcas is a vocal learner. And the second is that I have a certain level of awareness.
“To imitate, you need to compare what you’re doing with someone else,” she says.
Marino says he believes the reason for the imitation is that the whales are trying to communicate. “If you’re in a situation where you keep this other species in the tank, feed you, and ask to do things, I think you’d like to communicate, get in touch with other beings.”
What the whales are saying
Of course, I don’t know what the whales are saying with clicks and whistles. But we may get a better idea soon. Monica Weeland Sealsco-founder and director of the ORCA Behavior Institute, is one of a team of researchers who use hydrophone arrays to localize vocalizations to specific whales or individual groups of whales.
The team will learn more about how these sounds pair with drone observations of whales’ behavior and how these animals communicate. This study may not solve the mystery of salmon hats, but should provide insight into ORCA communication.
read more: Orcas may be smarter than you think, here’s what you need to know about their actions
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Avery Hart is a freelance science journalist. In addition to writing for Discover, she regularly writes about various outlets, both printed and online, including National Geographic, Science News Explores, Medscape, and WebMD. She is the author of Bullet who has your name. What You Probably Die, and What You Can Do About It, Clerisy Press 2007, and some books for younger readers. While attending university, Avery started out in journalism, writing for the school’s newspapers and editing student non-fiction magazines. Although she writes about all fields of science, she is particularly interested in AI-interests that developed while earning degrees in neuroscience, science of consciousness, and philosophy.
