Killer whale can mimic human voice, scientists discover

LONDON, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- A killer whale can successfully pronounce human words like "hello," "bye bye," "one, two" and "Amy" after a brief training, according to a study published Wednesday by a team of international researchers.

The subject of the study, a whale named Wikie, is a 14-year-old female orca living in a French aquarium with her three-year-old calf.

According to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, researchers from Germany, Britain, Spain and Chile found that Wikie learns so quickly that she copied the most testing sounds during the first 10 trials and three at the first attempt.

At first, the research team made Wikie get the "copy" order by training her to mimic three familiar orca sounds made by her calf Moana.

Then she was trained to copy five sounds belonging to other orcas she had never heard before, including a sound resembling a creaking door and blowing a raspberry.

Finally, Wikie was exposed to a human making three of the orca sounds and six human voices, including "hello," "Amy," "ah ha," "one, two," and "bye bye."

Though the words are short and simple, Josep Call, professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St. Andrews and a co-author of the study, said the founding is "plausible."

"I think here we have the first evidence that killer whales may be learning sounds by vocal imitation, and this is something that could be the basis of the dialects we observe in the wild," said Call.

Whether the ability of mimicking sounds is special to Wikie or can be found in all orcas needs further research on wild killer whales, the researcher added.

Did Wikie know what the meaning of the human sounds she was copying was? Call said no. "We have no evidence that they understand what their 'hello' stands for." Enditem