Young whales can imitate the voices of humans, according to a new paper that highlights the vocal mimicry skills of one whale in particular.
Dr Sam Ridgway, of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, studied the possibility of the marine mammal to copy the sound of people. It first happened to a young white whale, also known as a beluga, named NOC. It could make a sound similar to the human word “out”. Then it copied human words so well, that at first researchers thought they were hearing humans conversing in the distance. This study revealed an amplitude rhythm in NOC's vocalizations that was comparable to human speech. Fundamental frequencies in the whale's vocalizations were also in the same range of human speech and were several octaves lower than the whale's usual sounds. The whale NOC also went to a lot of trouble to make the sounds. The researchers explain that the whale had to vary the pressure in his nasal tract while making other muscular adjustments and inflating the vestibular sac in his blowhole. But when the whale turned 4 years he stopped his human vocal mimicry. Researchers say that there might be two reasons for this. The first is that hormonal changes related to sexual maturity may diminish a whale's urges to mimic. Another possible reason is that the novelty might have simply worn off for NOC. The findings open up the possibility of teaching white whales how to speak, Ridgway suggests. Voice of Russia, Discovery News, Source: Voice of Russia, Image: flickr.com