We’ve already talked about how different species can communicate with one another, to varying extents. Many social mammals have broadly similar body language, and some that spend a lot of time together, like pet dogs with humans, can learn a little about what the other is communicating.
One of the more unusual examples of interspecies communication involves orcas, a highly intelligent, extremely social species of whale – in fact we discussed orcas’ fashion sense in a previous blog post!
In 2018, researchers revealed findings showing that orcas were capable of imitating human speech. They started by training a captive orca, Wikie, to imitate the sounds other orcas made, and then – although her vocal apparatus is completely different to a human’s – taught her how to say a number of human words, including ‘hello’, ‘one, two’ and ‘bye bye’. They determined that Wikie – and other orcas – learn sounds by vocal imitation, which helps to explain why different pods of orcas in the wild use different arrays of vocalisations, that even have distinct dialects.
Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/orca-whale-swims-towards-a-person-in-blue-water-Q94StF6MW-k
