15 ms·

Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

232 points by okket 9y ago

sorokod 9y ago
Parrots can do this too.
- dinospaceship 9y ago
  ha.
SkittlesNTwix 9y ago
Completely misread this title first as, "Orcs can..."
- farnsworthy 9y ago
  Same. But they can, too. Be careful.
  - SurrealSoul 9y ago
    I dunno, you know what they call orcs with two brain cells Pregnant
gadders 9y ago
Seals can do this too [1]. Worth clicking on the link to hear the strong New England accent that Hoover the Seal had. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_(seal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_(seal)
- 2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
  I YouTubed this. The speech is surprisingly clear and sounds human.
  - gadders 9y ago
    He was a pretty good mimic. I just watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfqiEGYEQoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfqiEGYEQoQ and you have to watch the seal to make sure that is him talking and not the crowd.
    - knownothing 9y ago
      Interesting. If I was a sailor hundreds of years ago and witnessed something like that I might think it was a merman.
- robocat 9y ago
  Wikipedia audio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mgm_Hoover_the_talking_seal.ogg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mgm_Hoover_the_talking_...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pfortuny 9y ago
well, so do parrots and we are not surprised...
- sp332 9y ago
  This is really, really unusual for mammals.
  - gr3yh47 9y ago
    some dogs have done this
    - golem14 9y ago
      Bello the talking dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ2oX3M8gv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ2oX3M8gv4 <sorry, in German>
realPubkey 9y ago
It sounds more like humans pronouncing words in a way that killer-whales can reproduce.
- k_ 9y ago
  True enough. I still find it impressive, though.
mitchtbaum 9y ago
How would we type their speech patterns vs ours? Different frequency ranges? Speed? Cadence? ... Here is the only bit I can remember from cross-human language comparison, not cross-species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_tempo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_tempo (searched: different languages speaking rate) (Edit: information density and speech rate) So my first question is about types of "spoken languages"? --- from searching, "types of languages" "click languages": * African languages and linguistic typology - https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcgood/jcgood-AfricaTypology.pdf https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcgood/jcgood-AfricaTypology.p... * Language Classification: History and Method - https://edisciplinas.usp.br/mod/resource/view.php?id=2225588 https://edisciplinas.usp.br/mod/resource/view.php?id=2225588 Anyone have a speech-to-text and POS-tagger yet for dolphins' language morphology/-ies? --- Deciphering the Dolphin Language - http://neuronresearch.net/dolphin/pdf/Dolphin_language.pdf http://neuronresearch.net/dolphin/pdf/Dolphin_language.pdf An assumption can be made that the CNS of the dolphin employs a frame time similar to humans, nominally 30 milliseconds. As a starting point, it is reasonable to assume that a typical phoneme is three to five times longer than 30 ms based on experience with human languages. A complication arises because of the multiple sources of sound within the dolphin’s nasal passages, recalling that the larynx of the dolphin is not in its throat (the passage along which food is ingested). These multiple acoustic sources suggest the dolphin can achieve an equivalent of the unique “throat singing” of the Inuit and Tuva people of Asia. Throat singing is also known as overtone singing. Wikipedia provides a good description of throat singing. In Dolphin, the equivalent is clearly nasal singing. Nasal singing in dolphin may be even more extensive. As a starting point, the acoustic range of dolphin sounds (other than its forward focused echolocation sounds) potentially useful in communications (language) extends from about 2000 Hz to at least 80,000 Hz (with whistles extending up to about 40,000 Hz). In seeking to understand Dolphinia or Truncates, it makes no sense to restrict our analyses to frequencies that the human can hear. Nor is it rational to limit the dolphin’s language to either a tonal or a stressed structure. --- Interpreting the acoustic pulse emissions of a wild bottlenose dolphin - http://aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueArchives/1988/Aquatic_Mammals_14_1/Goodson.pdf http://aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueAr... The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240572231... I hope some researcher(s) will put out organized videos of dolphins chatting alongside audio spectrograms. Remember the Enigma story, every message had certain words in it and was likely to have certain ones in certain places at certain times from certain senders to certain receivers... Certainly.
blondie9x 9y ago
Whales are intelligent. They should not be killed by humans who mask the activities as scientific research. Japan is a great country and a leader on many levels. I speak Japanese. I enjoy Japanese food and culture. The people are very kind and considerate. There are some who are concerned if you stop killing whales you must stop killing fish and other forms of sustenance. This is not the case. The difference is whales are not sustenance and are not something most Japanese would eat or enjoy to eat. Therefore to stop killing whales does not mean we must stop killing the fish we eat to survive. Cultures evolve and more forward. Japan should move forward and stop killing whales. Japanese people should not allow tax payer money to finance a new whaling ship. There are more important programs that are much more needed. The subsidies for whaling should end. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/japan-to-replace-whaling-mother-ship-in-sign-hunts-will-go-on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/japan-to...
- sandworm101 9y ago
  And orca are not really whales. They are big dolphins. The name "killer whale" means "killer of whales", whale killer ... blame the french for that swap. I downloaded a bbc show called "wild wales" expecting an epic doc about the sea. What i got was two guys in a camo tent feeding peanuts to squirrels. Language is hard.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Orcas, porpoises, and dolphins are toothed whales. I don't know what you mean by "real whale" if the definition does not include them. Whatever it is, if your definition includes pilot whales and sperm whales, it probably has to include the dolphin family, too.
- ickwabe 9y ago
  Agreed. As should Norway and Iceland.
  - irrational 9y ago
    I feel the same way about horses. They serve horse steaks in Iceland (and probably other places) which I find equally as barbaric.
sethbannon 9y ago
Listening to these remarkable recordings, I can't help but think that as time goes on, more and more of the artificial mental barriers we've built between us and non-human animals will fall. I hope with more research humanity stops seeing non-human animals as resources to be exploited but rather as sentient beings to be respected.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Humans presumably are seen as sentient yet [the majority of us?] are being exploited in one way or another: Capitalism has no inbuilt concept of respect. If you meant not exploited for food, that is obviously different. I'm not aware of any humans that do that anymore. Now tell me how you judge sentience?
  - ImSkeptical 9y ago
    Why can't we respect human dignity like those communists who murdered and starved tens of millions of people, ruined economies, and consigned countless people to oppression and deprivation?
    - joemi 9y ago
      Communism as you're referring to it is not what many supporters of communism (and/or opponents of capitalism) are advocating for.
      - announcerman 9y ago
        As a citizen of an ex Eastern Bloc country I'd rather not have any other humans co-opt me into another helping of true communism™
        coldtea 9y ago
        Well, other members of ex Eastern Bloc countries disagree, so?
lerie82 9y ago
They are simply mimicking noise, it's not like they are evolving, this is very old news, didn't dolphins and whales do this in the 70's? It's a reach for publicity.
wizardforhire 9y ago
(Devils advocate here disclaimer) but imagine you're an isolated island with no large mammal population and pick a date long ago. Food is scarce and the ocean is large and these huge things are ripe but difficult for the taking. One is enough to feed a village for the better part of year... And when you eat it, it tastes like steak! A food you've never even contemplated existing! Add to that a rich cultural tradition that resists change and encourages strong dogmatic adherence that persists through the ages and is only bolstered through geographic isolation... And yeah I can see the Japanese's strong dedication to whale meat. Doesn't mean I like whaleing in the least or even agree with it but I can understand to some degree the difficulty of change and it must change. I also don't agree with these attempts at whale farming in Oklahoma. Whales are intelligent empathetic creatures who can most definitely feel pain and a whole host of other complex emotions. Only the most dense of us humans could advocate for their continued use as a food source.
- koverda 9y ago
  I haven't heard about whale farming in Oklahoma. Where can I find out more about it?
- dogecoinbase 9y ago
  And when you eat it, it tastes like steak! A food you've never even contemplated existing! Heh, least of the issues here, but it's a bit audacious to produce an analogy the core of which is "imagine never having experienced something with which you are familiar".
ourmandave 9y ago
"Candygram..."
- joejerryronnie 9y ago
  "I'm only a dolphin, ma'am"
dctoedt 9y ago
On a lighter note, @marklemley says: "If the orca says 'thanks for all the fish' I'm going into full apocalypse survival mode." https://twitter.com/marklemley/status/958756421952155648 https://twitter.com/marklemley/status/958756421952155648
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
futileboy 9y ago
"Alexa, order more tuna."
kpU8efre7r 9y ago
Can't wait to see a whale talk to me at the local zoo.
throwawazqq 9y ago
Imagine the combination of Orcas and/or other animals with artificial intelligence /cloud hookups, same as for humans. Certainly will be an interesting world...
emmelaich 9y ago
From 1964 - The Girl who Spoke to Dolphins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVAv77gEqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVAv77gEqo You can hear an attempt by the dolphin to mimic. Very unclear though. Perhaps the whole doco has better examples.

232 points by okket 9y ago

sorokod 9y ago

Parrots can do this too.

dinospaceship 9y ago
ha.

SkittlesNTwix 9y ago

Completely misread this title first as, "Orcs can..."

farnsworthy 9y ago
Same. But they can, too. Be careful.
- SurrealSoul 9y ago
  I dunno, you know what they call orcs with two brain cells Pregnant

gadders 9y ago

Seals can do this too [1]. Worth clicking on the link to hear the strong New England accent that Hoover the Seal had. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_(seal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_(seal)

2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
I YouTubed this. The speech is surprisingly clear and sounds human.
- gadders 9y ago
  He was a pretty good mimic. I just watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfqiEGYEQoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfqiEGYEQoQ and you have to watch the seal to make sure that is him talking and not the crowd.
  - knownothing 9y ago
    Interesting. If I was a sailor hundreds of years ago and witnessed something like that I might think it was a merman.
robocat 9y ago
Wikipedia audio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mgm_Hoover_the_talking_seal.ogg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mgm_Hoover_the_talking_...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pfortuny 9y ago

well, so do parrots and we are not surprised...

sp332 9y ago
This is really, really unusual for mammals.
- gr3yh47 9y ago
  some dogs have done this
  - golem14 9y ago
    Bello the talking dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ2oX3M8gv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ2oX3M8gv4 <sorry, in German>

realPubkey 9y ago

It sounds more like humans pronouncing words in a way that killer-whales can reproduce.

k_ 9y ago
True enough. I still find it impressive, though.

mitchtbaum 9y ago

How would we type their speech patterns vs ours? Different frequency ranges? Speed? Cadence? ... Here is the only bit I can remember from cross-human language comparison, not cross-species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_tempo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_tempo (searched: different languages speaking rate) (Edit: information density and speech rate) So my first question is about types of "spoken languages"? --- from searching, "types of languages" "click languages": * African languages and linguistic typology - https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcgood/jcgood-AfricaTypology.pdf https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcgood/jcgood-AfricaTypology.p... * Language Classification: History and Method - https://edisciplinas.usp.br/mod/resource/view.php?id=2225588 https://edisciplinas.usp.br/mod/resource/view.php?id=2225588 Anyone have a speech-to-text and POS-tagger yet for dolphins' language morphology/-ies? --- Deciphering the Dolphin Language - http://neuronresearch.net/dolphin/pdf/Dolphin_language.pdf http://neuronresearch.net/dolphin/pdf/Dolphin_language.pdf An assumption can be made that the CNS of the dolphin employs a frame time similar to humans, nominally 30 milliseconds. As a starting point, it is reasonable to assume that a typical phoneme is three to five times longer than 30 ms based on experience with human languages. A complication arises because of the multiple sources of sound within the dolphin’s nasal passages, recalling that the larynx of the dolphin is not in its throat (the passage along which food is ingested). These multiple acoustic sources suggest the dolphin can achieve an equivalent of the unique “throat singing” of the Inuit and Tuva people of Asia. Throat singing is also known as overtone singing. Wikipedia provides a good description of throat singing. In Dolphin, the equivalent is clearly nasal singing. Nasal singing in dolphin may be even more extensive. As a starting point, the acoustic range of dolphin sounds (other than its forward focused echolocation sounds) potentially useful in communications (language) extends from about 2000 Hz to at least 80,000 Hz (with whistles extending up to about 40,000 Hz). In seeking to understand Dolphinia or Truncates, it makes no sense to restrict our analyses to frequencies that the human can hear. Nor is it rational to limit the dolphin’s language to either a tonal or a stressed structure. --- Interpreting the acoustic pulse emissions of a wild bottlenose dolphin - http://aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueArchives/1988/Aquatic_Mammals_14_1/Goodson.pdf http://aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueAr... The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240572231... I hope some researcher(s) will put out organized videos of dolphins chatting alongside audio spectrograms. Remember the Enigma story, every message had certain words in it and was likely to have certain ones in certain places at certain times from certain senders to certain receivers... Certainly.

blondie9x 9y ago

Whales are intelligent. They should not be killed by humans who mask the activities as scientific research. Japan is a great country and a leader on many levels. I speak Japanese. I enjoy Japanese food and culture. The people are very kind and considerate. There are some who are concerned if you stop killing whales you must stop killing fish and other forms of sustenance. This is not the case. The difference is whales are not sustenance and are not something most Japanese would eat or enjoy to eat. Therefore to stop killing whales does not mean we must stop killing the fish we eat to survive. Cultures evolve and more forward. Japan should move forward and stop killing whales. Japanese people should not allow tax payer money to finance a new whaling ship. There are more important programs that are much more needed. The subsidies for whaling should end. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/japan-to-replace-whaling-mother-ship-in-sign-hunts-will-go-on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/japan-to...

sandworm101 9y ago
And orca are not really whales. They are big dolphins. The name "killer whale" means "killer of whales", whale killer ... blame the french for that swap. I downloaded a bbc show called "wild wales" expecting an epic doc about the sea. What i got was two guys in a camo tent feeding peanuts to squirrels. Language is hard.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Orcas, porpoises, and dolphins are toothed whales. I don't know what you mean by "real whale" if the definition does not include them. Whatever it is, if your definition includes pilot whales and sperm whales, it probably has to include the dolphin family, too.
ickwabe 9y ago
Agreed. As should Norway and Iceland.
- irrational 9y ago
  I feel the same way about horses. They serve horse steaks in Iceland (and probably other places) which I find equally as barbaric.

sethbannon 9y ago

Listening to these remarkable recordings, I can't help but think that as time goes on, more and more of the artificial mental barriers we've built between us and non-human animals will fall. I hope with more research humanity stops seeing non-human animals as resources to be exploited but rather as sentient beings to be respected.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Humans presumably are seen as sentient yet [the majority of us?] are being exploited in one way or another: Capitalism has no inbuilt concept of respect. If you meant not exploited for food, that is obviously different. I'm not aware of any humans that do that anymore. Now tell me how you judge sentience?
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  Why can't we respect human dignity like those communists who murdered and starved tens of millions of people, ruined economies, and consigned countless people to oppression and deprivation?
  - joemi 9y ago
    Communism as you're referring to it is not what many supporters of communism (and/or opponents of capitalism) are advocating for.
    - announcerman 9y ago
      As a citizen of an ex Eastern Bloc country I'd rather not have any other humans co-opt me into another helping of true communism™
      - coldtea 9y ago
        Well, other members of ex Eastern Bloc countries disagree, so?

lerie82 9y ago

They are simply mimicking noise, it's not like they are evolving, this is very old news, didn't dolphins and whales do this in the 70's? It's a reach for publicity.

wizardforhire 9y ago

(Devils advocate here disclaimer) but imagine you're an isolated island with no large mammal population and pick a date long ago. Food is scarce and the ocean is large and these huge things are ripe but difficult for the taking. One is enough to feed a village for the better part of year... And when you eat it, it tastes like steak! A food you've never even contemplated existing! Add to that a rich cultural tradition that resists change and encourages strong dogmatic adherence that persists through the ages and is only bolstered through geographic isolation... And yeah I can see the Japanese's strong dedication to whale meat. Doesn't mean I like whaleing in the least or even agree with it but I can understand to some degree the difficulty of change and it must change. I also don't agree with these attempts at whale farming in Oklahoma. Whales are intelligent empathetic creatures who can most definitely feel pain and a whole host of other complex emotions. Only the most dense of us humans could advocate for their continued use as a food source.

koverda 9y ago
I haven't heard about whale farming in Oklahoma. Where can I find out more about it?
dogecoinbase 9y ago
And when you eat it, it tastes like steak! A food you've never even contemplated existing! Heh, least of the issues here, but it's a bit audacious to produce an analogy the core of which is "imagine never having experienced something with which you are familiar".

ourmandave 9y ago

"Candygram..."

joejerryronnie 9y ago
"I'm only a dolphin, ma'am"

dctoedt 9y ago

On a lighter note, @marklemley says: "If the orca says 'thanks for all the fish' I'm going into full apocalypse survival mode." https://twitter.com/marklemley/status/958756421952155648 https://twitter.com/marklemley/status/958756421952155648

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

futileboy 9y ago

"Alexa, order more tuna."

kpU8efre7r 9y ago

Can't wait to see a whale talk to me at the local zoo.

throwawazqq 9y ago

Imagine the combination of Orcas and/or other animals with artificial intelligence /cloud hookups, same as for humans. Certainly will be an interesting world...

emmelaich 9y ago

From 1964 - The Girl who Spoke to Dolphins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVAv77gEqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVAv77gEqo You can hear an attempt by the dolphin to mimic. Very unclear though. Perhaps the whole doco has better examples.