First analysis of beluga whale mimicking human speech

Many of us talk to our pets, but we don't expect them to talk back. A beluga whale has bucked this trend by learning to imitate human speech. (Listen to it here.)

Noc was captured in 1977 when he was still a juvenile. By 1984, he was making unusual sounds. One day, a diver in his tank surfaced unexpectedly asking who had called to him to get out. It turned out that the cries of "out, out, out" had come from Noc.

"We were sceptical at first," says Sam Ridgway of the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego, California. So his team analysed Noc's sound waves. "They were definitely unlike usual sounds for a [beluga], and similar to human voices in rhythm and acoustic spectrum," he says. Pressure sensors placed in Noc's nasal cavities revealed he was making the sounds using the same mechanism as his normal calls.

There have been anecdotal reports of belugas imitating human speech, but this is the first time they have been analysed, says Justin Gregg of the Dolphin Communication Project in Mystic, Connecticut.

Talking seal

A few other animals have also mimicked human speech, notably parrots and a harbour seal called Hoover.

Famous mimics like lyrebirds do so to defend territories and attract mates, while katydids lure cicadas by mimicking their mating calls. Gregg thinks belugas are more likely to be social mimics, for instance learning a different "dialect" when they join a new group.

Belugas have a range of vocal tricks up their sleeves. A recent study showed that they can also learn to "label" objects with different sounds, and then choose from a selection of objects based on the sound they had heard (International Journal of Comparative Psychology, vol 25, p 195).

Journal reference: Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.044

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