Scientists from the SETI Institute have succeeded in a conversation immediately Humpback whale. This milestone, published in the journal Peer J, could help communicate with extraterrestrial life.
Las Whales They have one of the most complex and fascinating languages in nature. Although there is no clear explanation of their purpose, there is little doubt that they share information and build social bonds through these sounds.
Cetaceans communicate with clicks and sound sequences similar to so-called Morse code codas, which are grouped into different dialects for each family group or clan. Of these forms of communication probably the best known is the song of the humpback whalewhich consists of rhythmic melodies that repeat themselves in a pattern, sometimes for hours.
Recently, researchers from the SETI Institute (dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life), the University of California at Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation managed to have a short ‘conversation’ with a Humpback whalewho they called Twain, through an underwater speaker.
According to an article published in PeerJthe researchers used fragments of other whales’ songs to attract the cetaceans’ attention and exchange sounds over a longer period of time.
“We believe this is the first communicative exchange between humans and whales in the world hunchback languagesaid the study’s lead author, Dr. Brenda McCowan from the University of California at Davis.
However, the reading made of this scientific work is in many cases not adapted to reality.
“The research has been reported in a very sensational way, claiming that a 20-minute conversation has been established with a whale, while we are unable to do that,” he explains. Antonio Osuna Mascarocognitive biologist at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna.
“As far as we know, communication in cetaceans appears to be much more complex than scientifically suspected years ago, although it is also intended to be much simpler than human language. The songs of the humpback whale are extremely complex, but this It does not necessarily mean that they serve to communicate in a similar way as we do.he adds.
Conversation with a humpback whale
In the case of the Humpback whalealso known as humpback whale, both males and females emit vocalizations, but Only the males produce the songs that made the species popular.
For this reason, one of the main hypotheses is that its purpose is sexual or reproductive. These songs are transmitted from generation to generation, through social learning, and may vary depending on groups, geographic region, or time of year.
But although they share many features with language as understood by humans, they are scientifically opposed to describing it that way.
“We biologists are reluctant to use the term here language. This does not mean that valuable information cannot be conveyed through these sounds, but that we do not know whether they meet the necessary requirements to be so called,” he claims. Osuna Mascaro.
“We know that these numbers meet some of these requirements, such as are culturally acquired -they vary from year to year and from region to region, due to fashion, and They have a syntax -sounds are arranged according to the rules-.
But instead we know nothing about its possible semantics -if sounds have a specific meaning- or if, for example, they can be used to refer to elements that are not present,” he continues, admitting that in reality we “know very little about them.”
While he acknowledges that the development of new technologies, especially artificial intelligence and deep learning networks, “will make a major contribution to better understanding whales,” he believes these cetaceans are still “one of the great challenges of animal behavioral sciences”.
“Today no one can say for sure whether it will be possible to have a conversation with him Humpback whales in the future or not, although it is very likely that this will not be the case,” says this researcher in the field of animal cognition, who nevertheless clarifies that “if our intention is to communicate the way they communicate and share the information they “They share most of the time, which is probably simple, so I think the answer is yes.”
Humpback whales and aliens
At this point, someone may have wondered why the SETI Institute, a scientific organization with a decidedly astronomical character, conducts research into communication between humans and cetaceans. What do humpback whales have to do with aliens?
Actually nothing. Or maybe a lot, depending on how you look at it. The research conducted in the waters of Southeast Alaska is nothing more than an attempt to investigate intelligent communication in non-human species and then develop filters that can be used to decode signals received from other planets.
“There are studies suggesting that whales have highly developed cognitive abilities, but unlike primates, they are very different from us evolutionarily. So when we think about possible communication with extraterrestrial intelligences, which would be completely separate from our evolution, It is a very interesting experiment to determine to what extent we could communicate with these types of creatures“, expresses Hector Socas-Navarroscientific researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC).
Every day, astronomers around the world receive a huge amount of radio signalsand some might contain the answer to one of the eternal questions that have always accompanied humans: are we alone in the universe?
But the problem lies not only in filtering this abundance of data, but also in knowing how to interpret it, since aliens can communicate and somehow we have not yet managed to recognize those signals . The existence of filters that help identify and decipher them would be very useful in this task, which would also be supported by technological advances such as the development of artificial intelligence.
The songs of the Humpback whales They have fascinated people since their accidental discovery in the 1960s, when a secret US military station was tracking Soviet submarines in North Atlantic waters and came across these mysterious sounds that seemed straight out of science fiction.
Perhaps so much beauty is due solely to a reason as linked to the earth as a claim of a sexual nature, although it may also be that at the same time there lies in the language of these oceanic giants the key that allows us to decipher the messages broadcast from the depths of the universe.