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Scientists claim to have successfully ‘conversed’ with a whale (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by Emperor@feddit.uk to c/andfinally@feddit.uk

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Scientists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) in the US claim to have conversed with a humpback whale in Alaska as a proxy for communicating with aliens.

...

They found that while most of the whales ignored the recorded calls, one of them – a female named Twain – circled the scientists’ boat, mimicking the noises for about 20 minutes.

Researchers are not entirely sure what the recorded call meant, but suspect it is a kind of “contact call” that whales use to call each other.

“It might have just been us saying hello, and her responding hello, and us saying hello again,” Dr Walker explained.

“We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback ‘language,’” study lead author Brenda McCowan said in a statement.

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[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

cant they talk to monkeys in sign language too?

All the Great Apes have been taught sign language. It's rarer in monkeys but has been done. Quite what it means is an ongoing debate (Noam Chomsky is sceptical but he might just be angry they named a signing chimp, Nim Chimpsky). For example, they don't ask questions. However, Alex the talking parrot can, so perhaps we are talking to the wrong species.

[–] 2deck@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jesus, all of them know sign language??? I didn't vote for that

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 6 points 1 year ago

All of them - once you teach one they secretly pass it on to others until they are all communicating behind our backs. I think there's a documentary about how this can't possibly go wrong and bite us in the arse - Compliance of the Apes or something.

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In this case I take Noam Chomsky's side seeing as how their opponent literally tortured a monkey to try and prove a fascist eugenicist and didn't stop even though it was already made abundantly clear it was hurting the animal and they weren't going to get the results they wanted.