New Delhi:
Scientists have taught a captive killer whale, Wikie, to imitate human speech and to prove the fact have successfully recorded the female orca calling names and saying ‘hello’ to her trainer.
Scientists have successfully identified several words mimicked by Wikie, a 14-year-old captive born ocra at Marineland Aquarium, in Antibes, France.
Researchers of the paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B to confirm the imitating act of the ocra had made six persons to listens clips containing Wikie’s mimicry.
The people hearing to the highly-pitche distinct sound of voice clearly heard Wikie calling ‘Amy’. They were also confused first listening to ocra’s crying voice which sounds similar to a human cry.
The new research has also revealed that the killer whale ocra species can imitate human speech and in some cases even properly pronounce the words like ‘Bye Bye’, ‘One, Two’ and ‘Hello’.
The scientists working on the research have discovered that the different pods of wild killer whales have their own distinct dialect like humans have according to region.
Scientists in their earlier experiments had learnt the ocra’s ability to copy movements of other species and mimic sounds of bottlenose dolphins and sea lions.
Josep Call, professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St Andrews and a co-author of the study said, “The experiment was conducted to learn how flexible a killer whale can be in copying sounds.”
The scientist further added that only a fraction of the animal kingdom can mimic human speech, with brain pathways and vocal apparatus.
“What makes it even more impressive is that their morphology is so different and still they can mimic,” added Call.
The scientists are still researching if ocras understand the words they mimic. “There is no evidence yet now to prove that the ocra understand ‘hello’,” added Call.
Wikie’s training to mimic words
Researchers from institutions in Germany, UK, Spain and Chile in their journal Proceeding of the Royal Society B state that the 14-year-old Wikie was first trained to copy actions performed by another ocra on giving signals by humans.
As she learnt to copy commands, she was trained to imitate voices of familiar ocra sounds made by her three-year-old calf Moana.
As Wikie started mimicking her calf’s voice, she was exposd to five ocra sounds along with six human sounds including “hello”, “Amy”, “ah ha”, “one, two” and “bye bye”.
The scientists throughout their experiment found that Wikie was quick in copying sounds The matching were backed up through an analysis of various acoustic features from the recordings of Wikie’s sounds.
