Killer whales can learn and imitate not only the language of members of the same species, which is now known, but also the human one
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himKiller whales can learn and imitate not only the language of members of the same species, which is now known, but also the human one.
New research conducted by various universities including the Complutense University of Madrid, the Catholic University of Chile, the Polytechnic University of Madrid, the University of San Andrea and the Max-Planck-Institut for evolutionary anthropology, has provided the first experimental evidence of the vocal ability of killer whales.
According to the study, these animals are able to imitate new sounds produced by members of the same species, but also those of human language. The imitation of new sounds, that is, the learning of a new sound just by listening to it, is the typical property of human language that has guided the evolution of another unique adaptation of our species: culture. Although the ability to copy sounds from individuals of the same species is widespread in birds, it is extremely rare in mammals.
In this case, the killer whale Wilkie acquired a limited vocabulary which includes the words "hello", "hello hello", the numbers up to 3 and "Amy", the name of the coach.
“We know from a previous study that killer whales are able to learn by imitation new motor actions performed by their congeners. The work that is now published documents that this ability to imitate works when the stimuli are sounds, even when the models that produce them are individuals of other species, in this case, the human species " explain the scientists.
In the speech imitation study, the killer whale was trained to respond to a certain signal. In the first phase of the experiment, Moana, a 3-year-old male, was trained to make five vocalizations associated with different signals. The experimental subject was Wikie, a 14-year-old female killer whale.
Wikie acted as an "observer" subject who was asked to "copy" the new vocalizations emitted by Moana. In the second part of the experiment, 6 human sounds were tested on Wikie.
The orca has managed to imitate them all, regardless of whether they were produced by a creature of the same species as by a man
THU the sounds produced by the orca.
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And this is not good news especially when you think about the way the discovery was made. These are killer whales in captivity, often forced to repeat the exercises that are placed on them for many times. Most of the time the training of cetaceans is based on the deprivation of food, a real slavery.
Francesca Mancuso
