SETI scientists were able to talk to whales for the first time and are now ready for contact with aliens

Connection between space and sea found

A team of scientists said they had a first-of-its-kind conversation with a humpback whale. And this communication may one day lead to communication between people and aliens (if any are found, of course).

The language of humpback whales is as alien to us as the speech of a race of aliens from another planet. The ability to communicate with marine mammals could one day help us communicate with intelligent aliens, according to enthusiastic scientists.

An unusual exchange occurred between researchers and a female humpback whale for 20 minutes in August 2021 in southeast Alaska. Scientists recorded a “contact” signal that attracted the whale to their boat.

The marine mammal, named Twain, circled the team’s boat and responded in a conversational style to the “welcome signal,” according to a SETI Institute press release.

Dr. Brenda McCowan of the University of California, Davis, praised the results of the experiment.

“We believe this is the first such communication exchange between humans and humpback whales in a ‘humpback’ language,” admits McCowan.

Study co-author Fred Sharp notes that humpback whales are extremely intelligent and can actively communicate through both song and social calls.

Contact calls of sea giants are similar to human greetings. Whales use them to attract the attention of their fellow whales or to tell each other where they are, Brenda McCowan, a professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, told Business Insider.

“This is one of the most common calls in the social sound repertoire of humpback whales,” Fred Sharp, chief scientist at the Alaska Whale Foundation, explained to the publication.

Over the next 20 minutes, the scientists sent the same contact signal 36 times at different intervals, and Twain answered the call every time, even matching the intervals exactly.

This means that if scientists had waited 10 seconds before “addressing” Twain, she, in turn, would have waited 10 seconds before responding, McCowan emphasized. This type of spacing suggests Twain was engaged in intentional messaging, she added.

What does this have to do with talking to aliens? It turns out that Twain’s behavior may be akin to how intelligent alien races may be searching for humanity, says SETI Institute principal investigator Lawrence Doyle.

“An important assumption about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that aliens will be interested in making contact and will therefore target human recipients,” Doyle comments.

Lawrence Doyle and his SETI colleagues are working with whale and animal experts at the University of California, Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation to create smart filters to help them search for extraterrestrial intelligence. By improving these tools, scientists could use them to identify intelligent signals from space in an attempt to make first contact with an alien race.

In the meantime, the scientists said they hope similar work can be done with other intelligent animals on Earth, including other cetaceans (such as dolphins), as well as predators that cooperate to hunt, and other highly social species. such as meerkats and elephants.