Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds'
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Taught to mimic the pattern and durations of sounds in human speech, no animal has spontaneously tried such mimicry.
But researchers heard a nine-year-old whale named NOC make sounds octaves below normal, in clipped bursts.
The researchers outline in Current Biology just how NOC did it.
The first mystery, though, was figuring out where the sound was coming from.
When a diver at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California surfaced saying, "Who told me to get out?" the researchers there knew they had another example on their hands.
The whales are known as "canaries of the sea" for their high-pitched chirps, but while a number of anecdotal reports have described whales making human-like speech, none had ever been recorded.
Once they identified NOC as the culprit, they caught it on tape (view video below).
But researchers heard a nine-year-old whale named NOC make sounds octaves below normal, in clipped bursts.
The researchers outline in Current Biology just how NOC did it.
The first mystery, though, was figuring out where the sound was coming from.
When a diver at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California surfaced saying, "Who told me to get out?" the researchers there knew they had another example on their hands.
The whales are known as "canaries of the sea" for their high-pitched chirps, but while a number of anecdotal reports have described whales making human-like speech, none had ever been recorded.
Once they identified NOC as the culprit, they caught it on tape (view video below).
Read more: http://www.disclose.tv/news/Beluga_whale_makes_humanlike_sounds/86216#ixzz2AT8PvM8k
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