The mammal, as it turned out, can memorize and repeat any sounds that make its relatives.
A team of scientists from the UK, Germany and Chile taught a killer whale named Wicky to pronounce short individual phrases in English. The experiment also showed that these marine mammals can copy the unfamiliar sounds of their relatives.
By teaching mammals, the researchers found that one of the killer whales, named Wiki, was able to learn to “say” the words “hello,” “bye,” and “one-two.” This happened at the moment when she used the external nostrils, that is, the sound was heard above the water and resembled human speech.
Scientists said the discovery helps shed light on how killer whale dialects differ and how relatives imitate each other's speech. These creatures are already known for their ability to copy the movements of other marine life - bottlenose dolphins and sea lions.
“We wanted to see how flexible the killer whale can be when copying sounds. And the results are impressive: although killer whales have a different morphology, they can still closely mimic the sound of other species - in this case, us,”said Josep Zov, one of the authors of the study.
In addition, biologists forced Wicki to listen to the sounds of other killer whales along with English words. However, there was no evidence that the killer whale understands the meaning of human words.
“Killer whales are quite intelligent creatures. Their advantages in thinking over other mammals can be seen during training before performances in dolphinariums. In addition, they have their own speech through which they communicate with each other,”the study says.
Vicki's killer whale lives in the waters located in France. According to experts, in the course of research, she showed quite extensive abilities in memorizing commands. In just six months, she learned to jump out on command and make certain movements. Scientists hope that with the further development of logical thinking, it will be possible to teach her to express thoughts in a primitive form.
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GRIGORY PUSHKAREV