14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday's issue of Current Biology witnessed the publication of a new study describing how a beluga whale, which lived for nearly 30 years at the National Marine Mammal Foundation, learned to mimic human speech.
Moreover, it seems that this particular marine mammal went on "talking" until it reached its sexual maturity.
Because of this, researchers speculate that NOC, as this whale was named, only learned to “speak” because it spent most of its youth with people and therefore felt compelled to mimic their behavior.
Once the beluga reached adulthood, the need for mimicry subsided. As well as this, it is quite possible that NOC simply grew tired of making human-like sounds and gave up on the whole endeavor out of sheer boredom.
According to a marine ecologist working with the University of Copenhagen, NOC got a little help in producing these human-like sounds from its anatomical make-up.
Thus, beluga whales are often referred to as the “canaries of the sea”, due to their being able to produce a rather large variety of vocal calls, Scientific American informs us.
However, NOC still had to learn how to toy with the pressure in its nasal tract and other muscles in its body before it succeeded in producing sounds that mimicked human speech.
“The whale was recognized as the source of the speech-like sounds when a diver surfaced outside this whale's enclosure and asked 'Who told me to get out?' Our observations led us to conclude the 'out' which was repeated several time came from NOC,” reads the study.
Interestingly enough, NOC is not the only case of a speaking-whale known to science.
Thus, back in 1979, the staff at the Vancouver Aquarium claimed that one of the marine mammals in its care managed to utter its own name, “Lagosi.”
“We do not claim that our whale was a good mimic compare to such well-known mimics as parrots and mynah birds. However, the sonic behavior we observed is an example of vocal learning by the white whale,” the researchers go on to explain.
NOC's peculiar ability was identified in 1984, but it is only now that the research on this topic is made available to the general public. Unfortunately, this gifted beluga whale passed away several years ago.