Say “hello” to Wikie, a 16-year-oll orca whale, pictured above. Better yet, let Wikie say “hello” to you. Or “good bye.” If that’s not enough, Wikie also can count, at least as far as “one, two, three.”
New research, just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, says that Wiki is able to mimic a variety of human sounds on command, adding to the growing body of evidence that killer whales learn new sounds through social interaction.
In the wild, orcas live in tight-knit pods with unique vocal traditions. Now scientists believe that the whales acquire these dialects depending on their circumstances; they develop new calls when they move to a different setting, mimicking the whistles and clicks of dolphins, for example, or the bark of sea lions.
The new research was conducted at the Marineland Aquarium in Antibes, France, and reported in The New York Times. It says that researchers got Wiki to emulate six human words or sounds. “This is the first study to show that killer whales can make recognizable copies of human sounds,” says Dr. José Zamorano-Abramson, who led the study. Wiki’s ability to mimic words was not expected because orcas have different anatomical structures for speech then we do. You can listen to Wikie “talking” below.
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