Researchers taught an orca to say 'hello' for science

摘要

A 16-year-old orca was able to mimic human sounds like "hello" and "bye-bye" on command, according to new research. The study, published yesterday in the journal Proceeding of the Royal Society B, adds to the growing pile of research that shows the value of social learning for killer whales. "We wanted to study vocal imitation because it's a hallmark of human spoken language, which is in turn important for human cultural evolution," said José Zamorano-Abramson, the study's lead author. "We are interested in the possibility that other species also have cultural processes," he added. Scientists have suspected that killer whales develop dialects in the wild through social learning as opposed to genetic inheritance.