Orcas can imitate calls from other whales and even human speech—suggesting they can transmit cultural practices, such as unique dialects. Christopher Intagliata reports.
Researchers tested that premise by asking a killer whale named Wikie to imitate novel sounds from another killer whale, like this [Wolf sound] or this [creaking door sound].
And then: Wikie's trainers asked her to imitate them speaking English. Here's how she did: ["Amy, hello"]
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Pretty impressive, especially because she's using her nasal passages to imitate sounds we make with our vocal cords.
And a technical acoustic analysis of the original and imitated sounds showed that Wikie was doing a reliable job of mimicry, suggesting orcas do indeed possess the ability of vocal imitation. The study is in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. [Jose Z. Abramson et al., Imitation of novel conspecific and human speech sounds in the killer whale (Orcinus orca)]
So how long before Wikie's fluent in English? Well: "This is not our goal." Study author José Zamorano-Abramson, a comparative psychologist. "We are focusing on one aspect of vocal language, which is the capacity for vocal imitation." Because the ability to imitate implies a way to transmit culture… and preserve each orca pod's unique repertoire. ["bye bye"]
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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