Whale mimics human speech

From the NMMFoundation:

A new paper published by the National Marine Mammal Foundation in the scientific journal Current Biology sheds light on the ability of marine mammals to spontaneously mimic human speech. The study details the case of a white whale named NOC who began to mimic the human voice, presumably a result of vocal learning.

"The whale's vocalizations often sounded as if two people were conversing in the distance," says Dr. Sam Ridgway, President of the National Marine Mammal Foundation. "These 'conversations' were heard several times before the whale was eventually identified as the source. In fact, we discovered it when a diver mistook the whale for a human voice giving him underwater directions."

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Delightful Creatures

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

You say mimic. I say tease.
- http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm
  
  Mimicry … or mockery?
http://www.drake.org.uk Martyn Drake

“So long, and thanks for all the fish”
ComradeQuestions

I think it’s pretty clear what it’s mimicking… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1PBptSDIh8
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

What is that, Pashtun? Tagalog? Urdu?
- Snig
  
  Kazoo.
  - Shibi_SF
    
    Totally Kazoo.
    
    New headline suggestion: Noc posthumously kazoos at humans, mocking us from the grave…
orangedesperado

Was this whale subjected to a.m. radio played over crappy outdoor loudspeakers ?
- http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
  
  Odds on it spent significant time on a subway.
http://twitter.com/akgcandlefish Andrew Kenneth Gay

Who gave the whale Frampton Comes Alive?
Ashen Victor

“We discovered it when a diver mistook the whale for a human voice giving him underwater directions.”

The whale was indeed giving him directions, but in his best “human speech” voice.

Sort like when you travel to a foreing country, ask for directions and they give you a gibberish of englishlike colloquial hungarian.
- ffabian
  
  Yeah those pesky foreigners … how rude to use an other language than english.
edkedz

”…the case of a white whale named NOC…”

Who the hell still calls belugas “white whales”?
- http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
  
  Much less puts one in charge of the Network Operations Center.
  
  That being said, that whale is a lot more intelligible that many of the sysadmins I’ve known. And probably a lot less passive-agressive.
- cdh1971
  
  Who the hell still calls belugas “white whales”?
  
  The New York City DOT.
Steven Weiss

Parrots do that too. We have a blue and gold macaw, a yellow fronted amazon and two african greys that do that too. I hate it when I think I’m talking to my wife and I find out that I’m actually talking to Admiral Byrd, instead!
soundhound

Sounds like an asthmatic individual trying to play a kazoo while being waterboarded.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  It sounds like a CB radio.
i3c

sounds like an nyc subway conductor
Atvaark

I was pretty sure the date was October 22nd. Now I have to fix that and set my calendar to April 1st.
gumbowing

Great, that’s all we need, another species mocking our drunken ranting
SumoAllstar

Hired and now working the McDonald’s Drive-thru window.
- Dan Sanderson
  
  Obligatory.
  
  http://www.homestarrunner.com/drivethru.html
L_Mariachi

Are they sure it’s not the humans’ brains finding speechlike patterns in noise? I get that all the time when I’m half asleep with a fan on — sounds like people having conversations in another room. The same phenomenon accounts for seeing swirly patterns in video static (although come to think of it one doesn’t see that much these days, as modern TVs typically cut to solid blue or black in the absence of a coherent signal.)
- http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood
  
  Aha! So it’s not just me. Such a weird thing. And really spooky before I figured it out. Reducing my drug intake probably helped with that, too.
  
  Humans are pattern-making animals, it’s true. Very peculiar when I can see the machinery working to parse random sensory input and try to make something coherent out of it…makes me wonder about all of the constant parsing that’s going on that I don’t notice, and what the input would actually look/sound/feel/taste like without it.
  - m m
    
    it might taste like autism
- giantasterisk
  
  I thought exactly the same thing. The 2nd half of the recording sounds a hell of a lot like this:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83eSE8pm2x0
monitorhead

you know, I caught a squirrel in our backyard/courtyard area (the 2 apartment complexes face back to back, the strip between them have trees and grass) emulating a crow call between his squirrel chirps. probably to ward of predators.
- Shibi_SF
  
  Probably trying to scare you by crowing some crow-profanity at you.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Wouldn’t that just be ‘crowfanity’?
- m m
  
  i swear i heard a bird singing the car alarm song.
  no joke, but funny.
ymr049c

How human speech sounds to belugas:
Blah blah blah NOC.
Blah blah NOC blah.
Blah blah blah blah NOC.
- PathosBill
  
  Gary Larson will be suing you now :)
sburns54

He is mimicking the guy who was sat next to me at the bar last Saturday night.
Repurposed

We’re being mocked. It’s the Alexandra Wallace of the whale world.
http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot

Wow, that’s close enough to human speech patterns to be a little creepy.
http://singedrac.livejournal.com Singe

Are the researchers certain this is a whale and not an Alaskan malamute or husky?
Boundegar

This sound really needs to be slowed down.
http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC

Is it too late to get this beluga into the presidential debates?
Dave Brewer

I thought he said “Fa want fish.”
Tchoutoye

John C. Lilly and his wife tried to teach dolphins to talk. There are some hilarious recordings of that.
BarBarSeven

“Blah, blah, blah… Talking on cellphone about some bullshit… Doo, dee, doo, dee, foo… Mortage… Wife… Kids… Blah, bloh, blee, oh how I wish I was a whale! They are the best!”
quazi

Dubstep sample in 3.. 2..
LainieMac

Owl Right! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8
- glittertrash
  
  Exactly what I thought!
V

requisite posting…
ChickieD

I wish I spoke whale.
- ChickieD
  
  Reference…